READINGS  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO  •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •   SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


READINGS  IN  RURAL 
SOCIOLOGY 


BY 

JOHN  PHELAN 

Professor  of  Rural  Sociology  and  Director  of 
Short  Courses  at  Massachusetts  Agri- 
cultural College 


H2eto  gorfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1920 

• 

Att  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1920, 

BY  THE  «MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  September,  1920. 


PREFACE 

The  rapid  introduction  during  the  past  ten  years  of  courses  in 
rural  sociology  in  universities,  colleges,  normal  schools  and  other 
institutions  engaged  in  the  preparation  of  young  men  and  women 
for  the  rural  field  has  prepared  the  way  for  a  book  of  readings 
in  this  subject  that  may  be  used  as  a  text  for  an  introductory 
course. 

Much  of  the  material  included  in  this  book  has  been  used  with 
college  classes  in  this  institution  and  with  classes  of  teachers 
in  normal  schools  and  in  university  summer  courses.  In  the 
selection  of  the  material  it  has  seemed  best  to  draw  upon  the 
writings  of  men  and  women  whose  long  experience  or  professional 
standing  entitles  them  to  speak  with  some  degree  of  authority. 

I  have  assumed  that  an  introductory  course  in  rural  sociology 
should  endeavor:  first,  to  develop  a  broad,  sympathetic  under- 
standing of  the  real  needs  and  actual  conditions  of  farm  and  com- 
munity life  in  the  United  States ;  second,  to  lead  students  to  ap- 
preciate the  relationship  between  life  and  labor,  wealth  and  wel- 
fare on  the  farm,  since  farming  is  not  only  an  occupation  but  also 
a  mode  of  life ;  third,  to  show  as  concretely  as  possible  the  unity 
of  interest  of  rural  and  urban  groups  based  on  the  fact  that  the 
farm  supplies  the  city  not  only  with  food  but  also  with  a  large 
proportion  of  its  population,  thus  making  necessary  a  sound 
rural  life  as  the  condition  for  the  development  of  a  permanent 
industrial  democracy;  fourth,  to  interest  students  in  taking  an 
active  part  in  the  work  of  those  agencies  that  make  for  better 
conditions  on  American  farms  and  in  American  rural  communi- 
tion;  fifth,  to  endeavor  to  prevent  students  from  making  that 
most  common  of  all  errors — the  undervaluation  of  the  farmer's 
own  judgment  of  what  is  best  for  himself. 

Grateful  acknowledgment  is  here  made  to  the  authors  and 
publishers  for  their  generous  contributions  and  unfailing  cour- 
tesy. Their  names  appear  from  page  to  page.  My  thanks  are 

v 


vi  PREFACE 

due  to  many  colleagues  and  friends  for  suggestions  and  criti- 
cisms concerning  the  organization  or  selection  of  the  material,  and 
to  President  Kenyon  L.  Butterfield  for  his  interest  and  encour- 
agement in  its  publication.  To  my  wife,  Ida  Densmore  Phelan, 
I  am  indebted  for  assistance  in  the  abridgement  of  selections, 
the  reading  of  the  proof  and  the  preparation  of  the  index. 

JOHN  PHELAN. 

Massachusetts  Agricultural  College, 

Amherst,  Massachusetts, 

1920. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND 1 

Farm  Life  a  Century  Ago  ....    Ethel  Stanwood  Bolton  .  1 
Intemperance  in  Colonial  Days   .      .    Percy  Wells  Bidwell  .      .  13 
What  Awaits  Rural  New  England   .    Thomas  Nixon  Carver     .  16 
Facts   New   England    Faces    .      .      .    Hampden     County     Im- 
provement League       .  20 

Agriculture  in  New  England    .      .      .    Kenyan  L.  Butterfield   .  20 

Bibliography 25 

CHAPTER  II 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  THE  WEST     ....  27 
The  Middle  West— The  Fiber  of  the 

People Edward  Alsworth  Ross    .  27 

The   Significance  of  the  Frontier  in 

American   History      .....    Frederick  Jackson  Turner  29 

The  Spirit  of  the  Pioneer  ....    Eay  Stannard  Baker  .      .  34 

The  Passing  of  the  Frontier  .      .      .    James  Bryce   ....  35 

The  Great  Southwest    .      .      .      .      .    Eay  Stannard  Baker  .      .  36 

Life  in  the  Corn  Belt Thomas  Nixon  Carver     .  38 

Bibliography 44 

CHAPTER  III 

THE  OLD  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEW 46 

Social  Conditions  of  the  Old  and  the 

New   South PHilip  Alexander  Bruce  .  46 

Our  Carolina  Highlanders                    .    E.  C.  Branson     ...  58 

The  Rural  Negro  and  the  South  .      .    Booker  T.  Washington  .  65 

Following  the  Color  Line  ....    Eay  Stannard  Baker  .      .  69 

Bibliography 72 

CHAPTER  IV 

THE  IMMIGRANT  IN  AGRICULTURE 75 

1     Immigration  in   Agriculture    .      .      .    John   Olsen     ....  75 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Why  Immigrants  Go  to   Cities    .      .    Henry  Pratt  Fairchild  .  86 
Immigration    as    a    Source   of    Farm 

Laborers John  Lee  Coulter  ...  88 

Bibliography 93 

CHAPTER  V 
PRESENT  PROBLEMS  OF  COUNTRY  LIFE 95 

Wanted — A  National  Policy. in  Agri- 
culture   Eugene  Davenport  .  .  95 

Who  Is  the  Farmer? A.   M.   Simons      .      .      .110 

The  Point  of  View  in  Comparisons  of 

City  and  Country  Conditions   .      .    Kenyan  L.  Butterfield     .   Ill 

Soldier  Settlements  in  English-Speak- 
ing Countries Elwood  Mead  ....  114 

The  Farmer  in  Relation  to  the  Wel- 
fare of  the  Whole  Country  .  .  .  Theodore  Roosevelt  .  .  116 

Bibliography 117 

CHAPTER  VI 

SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS 119 

A.     COOPERATION 

The  Moral  Basis  of  Cooperation  .      .    Thomas  Nixon  Carver     .  119 
Farmers'    Cooperative   Exchanges      .    Alexander  E.  Cance  .      .  120 
Social  Effects  of  Cooperation  in  Eu- 
rope       C.  0.  Gill 131 

B.      OWNERSHIP  AND   TENANCY 

Tenant    Farming John  M.  Gillette  .      .      .137 

Some  Advantages  of  Tenancy     .      .  W.  0.  Hedrick     .      .      .   142 
Agrarian  Aristocracy  and  Population 

Pressure E.  C.  Hayes    ....   145 

C.  ADULT   LABOR 

The  Influence  of  Machinery  on  the 
Economic  and  Social  Conditions  of 
the  Agricultural  People  .  .  .  H.  W.  Quaintance  .  .  147 

The  Agricultural  Element  in  the  Pop- 
ulation   Eugene  Merritt  .  .  .  150 

A  Point  of  View  on  the  Labor  Prob- 
lem   L.  H.  Bailey  .  .  .  .152 

D.  CHILD    LABOR 

Rural  Child  Labor John  M.  Gillette  .      .      .   155 

Colorado    Beet    Workers    ....    Dr.  E.  N.  Clopper     .      .   156 


CONTENTS 


IX 


PAGE 

Strawberry  Pickers  of  Maryland  .      .    Harry  H.  Bremer      .      .  157 

Children  or  Cotton Lewis  H.  Hine     .      .      .   158 

Bibliography 160 


CHAPTER  VII 

MENTAL  AND  MORAL  ASPECTS  OF  RURAL  LIFE 162 

Characteristics  of  the  Farmer  .      .      .    James  Bryce  ....  162 
The  Influence  of  Farm  Life  on  Child- 
hood       Charles   W.  Elliot     .      .  164 

An  Appreciation  of  Rural  People    .    T.  N.  Carver  ....  165 
The    Rural    Environment    and    Great 

Men W.  J.  Spillman    ...  168 

Suggestion   and   City-Drift      .      .      .    Ernest  R.  Groves       .      .  172 

The  Mind  of  the  Farmer  ....    Ernest  E.  Groves       .      .  175 

The  Need  of  Ideals  in  Rural  Life   .    Kenyan  L.  Butterfield     .  181 

Bibliography 183 

CHAPTER  VIII 

RURAL  HEALTH — PHYSICAL  AND  MENTAL 185 

A.     RURAL  HEALTH — PHYSICAL 
A   Sociologist's  Health   Program  for 

the  Rural   Community    .      .      .      .    L.  L.  Bernard       .      .      .   185 
City  is  Healthier  for  Children  than 

the    Country Thomas  D.   Wood     .      .  193 

Rural    Sanitation :    Definition,    Field, 

Principles,  Methods,  and  Costs  .      .    W.  S.  Rankin,  M.D.  .      .  197 

B.      RURAL   HEALTH — MENTAL 

Feeble-mindedness    Defined      .      .      .    E.  J.  Emerick      .      .      .   203 

Fundamental     Facts     in     Regard    to 

Feeble-mindedness Va.  Board  of  Charities  .   204 

The   Hill  Folk Danielson  and  Davenport  206 

The  Extent  of  Feeble-mindedness  in 
Rural  and  Urban   Communities  in 

New  Hampshire Report  of  the  Children's 

Commission       .      .      .   213 

Feeble-minded    Citizens    in    Pennsyl- 
vania      Dr.   W.  E.  Key   .      .      .214 

Amentia  in  Rural  England     .      .      .    A.  F.  Tredgold     .      .      .   217 

Urban  and  Rural  Insanity     .      .      .U.S.  Bureau  of  Census  .   218 

What  is  Practicable  in  the  Way  of 

Prevention  of  Mental  Defect   .      .    W.  E.  Fernald     .      .      .219 

Bibliography 223 


xii  CONTENTS 

PACE 

The  Community  Fair J.  Sterling  Moran      .      .  402 

The  Smith-Hughes  Act v  •     .     .     .   407 

Bibliography 407 

CHAPTER  XV 

THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH 411 

Ten  Years  in  a  Country  Church  .  .  Matthew  B.  McNutt  .  .  411 
Land  Tenure  and  the  Rural  Church  .  Henry  Wallace  .  .  .  421 
Rural  Economy  as  a  Factor  in  the 

Success  of  the  Church   .      .      .      .    T.  N.  Carver  .      .      .      .426 
The   Church   Situation   in   Ohio    .      .     C.    0.    Gill      ....  431 

The  Genoa  Parish Rev.  A.  Ph.  Kremer  .      .  435 

Rural  Work  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.   .      .     A.  E.  Roberts  and  Henry 

Israel 437 

County  Work  of  the  Y.  W.  C.  A.  .  .  Jessie  Field  .  .  .  .  440 
Ten  Years'  Progress  in  County  Y.  M. 

C.  A.  Work  in  Michigan     .      .      .    C.  L.  Rame     .      .      .      .441 
The  Call  of  the  Country  Parish  .      .     Kenyan  L.  Butterfield     .  442 

Sectarianism Warrer.  H.  Wilson     .      .  443 

Report  of  Committee  on  Country 
Church  Function,  Policy,  and  Pro- 
gram   Kenyan  L.  Butterfield, 

Miss  Jessie  Field, 
Charles  0.   Gill, 
Albert  E.  Roberts, 
Henry  Wallace     .      .      .  444 
Bibliography 452 

CHAPTER  XVI  - 

THE  VILLAGE 455 

The  History  of  Village  Improvement 

in  the  United  States W.  H.  Manning   .      .      .455 

Social  Privileges  of  Village  or  Small 

City C.  J.  Galpin   ....   464 

The  Town's  Moral  Plan  ....  llarlan  P.  Douglass  .  .  467 
Civic  Improvement  in  Village  and 

Country Frank  A.  Waugh  .      .      .  471 

Bibliography 476 

CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  SURVEY 478 

The    Survey    Idea    in    Country    Life 

Work L.  H.  Bailey  ....   478 

Five  Principles  of  Surveys     .      .      .    Paul  U.  Kellogg  .      .      .   481 


CONTENTS  xiii 

PAGE 

A  Method  of  Making  a  Social  Survey 

of  a  Rural  Community  .  .  .  .  C.  J.  Galpin  ....  484 

The  Social  Anatomy  of  an  Agricul- 
tural Community C.  J.  Galpin  ....  490 

Bibliography 497 

CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  ORGANIZATION  OP  RURAL  INTERESTS t     .  500 

A.      RURAL  ORGANIZATION 

Rural  Organization Kenyan  L.  Butterfield     .  500 

B.      INTERNATIONAL  ORGANIZATION 

The  International  Institute  of  Agri- 
culture   Official 512 

C.      NATIONAL   ORGANIZATION 

"Work  of  the  Office  of  Markets  and 

Rural  Organization C.  J.  Brand   ....  515 

The  Place  of  Government  in  Agricul- 
tural Cooperation  and  Rural  Or- 
ganization   516 

The  County  Farm  Bureau  .      .      .      .    L.  R.  Simons  ....   518 

Farmers'  Clubs Kenyon  L.  Butterfield     .  536 

Farmers'  Social  Organizations     .      .    A.  D.  Wilson  ....   541 

D.      VOLUNTARY   ORGANIZATION 

Declaration  of  Purposes  of  the  Pa- 
trons of  Husbandry Preamble 552 

E.      POLITICAL  ORGANIZATION 

The  National  Non-Partisan  League 557 

F.      COMMUNITY   ORGANIZATION. 

How  to  Organize  a  Community  .  .  E.  L.  Morgan  ....  567 
Definition  of  a  Rural  Community  .  .  C.  W.  Thompson  .  .  .  576 
Bibliography 576 

CHAPTER  XIX 

LEADERSHIP 581 

Leadership  or  Personal  Ascendency  .    Charles  E.  Cooley     .      .  581 

Leadership E.  C.  Hayes    .      .      .      .583 

Rural    Leadership L.  H.  Bailey  ....  584 

The   Secret  of   Influence    ....    James  Bryce   ....  584 

Training  for  Rural  Leadership    .      .    John  M.  Gillette  .      .      .  585 

The  Sources  of  Leadership     .      .      .    John  E.  Boardman   .      .  587 

The  Development  of  Rural  Leadership    G.  Walter  Fiske  .      .      .  589 


xiv  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Seaman  A.  Knapp Pub.  U.  S.  Bur.  of  Ed.  .   601 

Henry  Wallace Herbert   Quick      .      .      .604 

Bibliography 609 

CHAPTER  XX 

THE  FIELD  OF  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 611 

The  Sociology  of  Rural  Life  .  .  .  A.  R.  Mann  .  .  .  .611 
The  Scope  of  Rural  Sociology  .  .  John  M.  Gillette  .  .  .615 
The  Teaching  of  Rural  Sociology  .  .  Dwight  Sanderson  .  .  620 

Definitions  of  Rural  Sociology 622 

Bibliography 623 


READINGS  IN  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

CHAPTER  I 

COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND 
FARM  LIFE  A  CENTURY  AGO  1 

ETHEL   STANWOOD   BOLTON 

IN  the  old  days,  when  methods  of  work  about  the  house  and 
farm  were  prized  for  their  hoary  antiquity  rather  than,  as  now, 
for  their  novelty,  and  all  farmers  did  as  their  ancestors  had 
done,  there  was  hardly  a  man  in  the  New  England  towns  who 
was  not  engaged  in  the  pleasant  occupation  of  farming.  The 
storekeeper  and  the  miller  plowed,  harrowed,  and  cultivated  in 
the  intervals  of  their  other  work,  and  the  minister  himself  hung 
up  his  gown  after  the  last  service  on  Sunday,  and,  like  the  rest 
of  the  community,  worked  his  land  on  Monday  morning.  A 
century  ago  each  town  owned  a  farm,  the  use  of  which  was  al- 
lowed the  minister,  rent  free,  as  a  part  of  his  salary. 

The  struggle  in  modern  times  is  for  the  money  to  buy  the 
necessities  of  life;  then  there  was  less  to  buy,  and  each  man 
was  dependent  on  his  own  exertions  to  get  the  necessities  them- 
selves from  the  soil  or  from  the  stock  which  he  could  afford  to 
keep. 

In  those  days,  aside  from  the  work  which  the  miller  or  the 
itinerant  cobbler  performed,  each  farm  was  a  nearly  self-sup- 
porting entit}T,  both  for  food  and  clothing.  In  modern  times 
the  great  English  artist,  printer,  and  socialist,  William  Morris, 
founded  a  settlement  which  tried  to  be  independent  of  the  out- 
side world,  growing  and  making  all  its  own  necessities  and 
luxuries.  The  experiment  was  no  more  of  a  success  than  Mr. 
Alcott's  similar  scheme  at  Fruitlands,  in  the  town  of  Harvard. 

i  Adapted  from  a  paper  read  upon  several  occasions,  privately  printed. 

1 


SOCIOLOGY 


In  our  great-grandfathers'  time,  however,  this  was  no  expe: 
ment,  curious  and  interesting,  but  a  fact  to  be  reckoned  wi 
from  day  to  day  throughout  their  lives. 

The  village  store  sold  the  few  luxuries  of  life  —  white  ai 
brown  sugar,  salt,  West  Indian  goods,  such  as  molasses  ai 
spices,  and,  most  of  all,  New  England  rum. 

Nearly  every  town  boasted  a  foundry,  where  articles  we 
made  by  hand,  which  would  be  far  beyond  the  ability  of  01 
modern  blacksmith.  Here  were  made  the  plows  and  scythes, 
the  foundry  was  equipped  with  a  trip  hammer;  shovels  and  ho» 
for  outside  work,  nails  for  the  carpenter,  from  the  great  ire 
spike  to  the  shingle  nail.  The  tools  the  carpenter  used  also  can 
from  the  hands  of  the  local  blacksmith.  In  many  country  town 
old  garrets  will  yield  great  chisels,  primitive  axes,  and  wrong! 
iron  bit-stocks,  all  made  by  hand  and  testifying  to  the  excellenc 
of  workmanship  by  their  age  and  condition.  The  househol 
utensils,  too,  were  his  work,  the  fire  dogs,  toasting  racks,  hob; 
iron  kettles,  skillets,  and  an  endless  array  of  less  common  things 
and  all  this  in  addition  to  the  shoeing  of  horses  and  oxen. 

From  1799  to  1853,  without  a  break,  a  good  man  of 
Massachusetts  town  kept  a  line-a-day  diary,  and  from  that  I  as 
going  to  quote,  from  the  four  seasons  of  the  year,  to  show  th 
dull  routine  of  work  in  which  the  lives  of  our  grandfathers  am 
great-grandfathers  were  passed;  how  it  lacked  the  diversifiec 
interests  which  we  consider  necessary  to  our  happiness  to-day 
and  yet  how  little  the  unrest  of  modern  times  enters  into  any  o: 
its  spirit. 

Take  these  short  sketches  of  the  life  of  James  Parker,  knowi 
as  '  *  Captain  James,  '  '  a  young  and  newly  married  man  in  1806 

"  April  1st.     I  cut  Hop-poles  at  the  South  End. 

2nd.  I  wrought  for  Ivory  Longl'ey,   cart  wood.     Mr 

Edgarton  Departed  this  life. 
3d.     Fast  Day.     I  and  Ruthy  (his  wife)  went  to  Mr. 

Harkness    (his   wife's   father).     James    came 

home  with  us. 
4th.  I  and  Ruthy  went  to  the  Funeral  of  Mr.  Edgarton. 

Buryed  in  Mason  order.     The  day  was  pleas- 

ant.    A  great  collection  of  People. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND  3 

5th.  I  split  staves,  mortised  posts.  Ruthy  went  to 
Groton. 

6th.  I  and  Ruthy  went  to  meeting  1/2  the  day  1/2  went 
to  funeral  of  Joel  Willard's  Child  that  was 
drowneded. 

7th.  I  made  a  Curb  to  the  well.  Went  to  town  Meet- 
ing. 

8th.  I  partly  made  a  yoak  and  it  stormed. ' ' 

Later  on,  in  the  summer,  his  work  changed,  and  was  that  of  a 
tiller  of  the  soil  about  his  business: 

"  July  28th.  I  mow'd  1/2  the  day,  1/2  plow'd  hops.     Abner 

mow'd  all  day. 
29th.  I  plow'd  and  how'd  hops  1/2  the  day.     I  went  and 

plow'd  Abner 's  Corn.     Abner  helpt  me  1/2 

the  day. 
30th.  I  sow'd  some  turnips,  it  rain'd.     I  went  to  Davids 

(his  brother). 
31st.  I  helpt  Father  plow  with  my  oxen  and  Vene  helpt 

Drive. 
August  1st.    I  was  haying.     Abner  helpt  me  1/2  the  day.     I 

carted  my  N  to  Capt.  Edgarton's. 
2nd.  I  was  plowing  my  stubble,  it  rain'd  and  Clowdy. 
3.       I  went  to  meeting.     Esq.  Tom  (the  minister's  son) 

red  the  Discourse. 

And  so  it  is  a  constant  reiteration  of  plowing,  mowing,  raking, 
hoeing,  all  done  by  hand  or  with  the  slow-paced  oxen.  How 
many  lessons  in  patience  the  farmer  learned  in  those  days,  and 
what  a  dignified  ease  there  was  about  it  all!  There  were  no 
complaints  when  the  hay  was  all  cut  and  the  weather  turned 
bad,  but  a  calm  acceptance.  In  October  preparations  for  the 
winter  were  being  made. 

"  October  1       I  began  to  draw  and  hew  the  timber  for  my  hog- 
pen. 

2nd.  I  drew  and  hew'd  timber  for  the  same  Abner 
helpt  me. 


RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

3rd.  I  hew'd  timber,  Abner  helpt  me.     I  dug  some 

potatoes. 

4th.  I  kiled  my  Bull.     Abner  helpt  me. 
5th.  I  and  Ruthy  went  to  meeting  1/2  went  to  Mr. 

Harkness's. 
6th.  I  helpt  my  father  1/2  the  day  made  cider  at 

Capt,   Hazen's.     1/2   dug  Potatoes   at   the 

Pond. 
7th.  I    and    Ruthy    went    to    Lancaster.     I    went    to 


A  little  later,  after  frost  had  set  in,  more  animals  were  killed 
• — cattle,  sheep,  and  pigs — and  frozen.  The  creatures  were  hung 
whole  in  the  attic  or  in  some  convenient  shed,  and  represented 
the  winter's  supply.  Apples  were  dried  or  turned  into  cider, 
for  few  were  kept  in  barrels  for  the  winter's  use,  as  we  now 
keep  them. 

Most  towns  had  cider  mills  in  which  the  neighbors  had  rights. 
The  mills  were  usually  stone-walled  and  sometimes  were  cut  into 
a  hillside,  like  a  cellar  open  in  front,  Inside  was  the  great  press, 
which  was  worked  by  a  horse  going  round  and  round,  harnessed 
to  a  great  bar  overhead.  The  size  of  the  press  is  evidence  of 
the  universal  use  of  cider. 

There  is  one  note  which  is  dominant  throughout  the  diary,  and 
that  is  one  of  mutual  helpfulness.  When  haying  time  came,  it 
was  not  each  man  for  himself,  but  all  the  men  of  a  small  neigh- 
borhood worked  together,  and  harvested  the  hay  from  each  farm 
until  it  was  all  well  housed.  Even  then  the  harvest  was  slow 
in  comparison  with  what  our  modern  machinery  will  accom- 
plish. If  any  were  in  trouble,  help  was  immediate  and  prac- 
tical. If  a  man  were  sick  and  the  burden  fell  on  the 
woman  alone,  the  cattle  were  tended  and  the  work  done  by  the 
neighbors. 

Throughout  December  Captain  Parker  sledded  wood  for  him- 
self and  for  others  with  his  pair  of  oxen,  and  doubtless  got  some 
of  the  ready  money  which  all  men  like  to  have.  One  entry  on 
Christmas  Day,  less  than  ten  years  later,  shows  how  much  our 
forefathers  lacked  appreciation  of  the  joys  of  a  holiday.  Cap- 
tain James  writes : 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND  5 

"December  25th.  I   helpt   clean   the   school-house.     The   school 
kept  1/2  the  day." 

There  was  one  great  industry  which  brought  much  money  to 
New  England  towns  for  many  years;  that  was  hop  growing. 
Disease  and  competition  from  more  Western  States  finally  put 
an  end  to  one  of  the  great  money-making  employments  of  the 
New  England  farm  of  those  days.  In  the  middle  of  one  Massa- 
chusetts town  there  can  still  be  seen  a  field  plowed  and  hilled 
for  the  hops  that  were  never  planted.  Why  they  were  not,  no 
one  can  tell  now,  but  there  the  furrows  are,  in  the  midst  of  a 
great  wood,  with  sixty-year-old  pine  trees  reaching  far  over  your 
heads,  growing  in  that  forsaken  field.  On  many  of  the  farms 
one  can  see  the  old  hop  kilns  in  a  more  or  less  advanced  state  of 
ruin  adding  their  picturesque  touch  to  the  landscape. 

A  hundred  years  ago  the  vocation  of  a  husbandman  or  farmer 
was  as  truly  a  trade  to  be  learned  as  that  of  cobbler,  miller,  black- 
smith, or  the  rest.  So  young  boys  were  apprenticed  to  this 
trade,  as  to  the  others.  This  custom,  also,  in  large  measure, 
solved  the  problem  of  help  for  the  farmers  of  that  day.  The 
low  wages  paid  these  apprentices  for  their  services  gives  some 
explanation  of  the  reasons  for  the  acquisition  of  a  comfortable 
living  by  many  farmers. 

Among  the  Parker  papers  in  Shirley  I  found  an  indenture  of 
about  one  hundred  years  ago,  which  gives  a  vivid  picture  of  the 
duties  of  the  apprentice  and  his  master.  The  father's  caution 
in  demanding  education  "if  the  said  apprentice  is  capable  to 
learn,"  shows  how  meager  the  learning  was  in  those  days  among 
the  poorer  classes. 

"This  Indenture  Witnesseth,  that  David  Atherton  of  Shirley 
in  the  County  of  Middlesex  and  Commonwealth  of  Massa- 
chusetts, Yeoman,  hath  put  and  placed  and  by  these  presents 
doth  put  and  bind  out  his  son  David  Atherton  Junr — and 
the  said  David  Atherton  Junr  doth  hereby  put,  place 
and  bind  out  himself  as  an  Apprentice  to  James  Parker 
Esqr  of  Shirley  in  the  County  and  Commonwealth  afore- 
said to  learn  the  art  or  trade  of  an  husbandman ;  the  said  David 
Atherton  Junr  after  the  manner  of  an  Apprentice  to  dwell  with 
and  serve  the  said  James  Parker  Esqr  from  the  day  of  the  date 


o  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

hereof  untill  the  eighth  of  January  one  thousand,  eight  hundred 
and  twenty  four,  at  which  time  the  said  apprentice  if  he  should 
be  living  will  be  twenty  one  years  of  age.  During  which  time 
or  term  the  said  apprentice  his  said  master  well  and  faithfully 
shall  serve,  his  secrets  keep,  and  his  lawful  commands  every- 
where at  all  times  readily  obey,  he  shall  do  no  damage  to  his 
said  master,  nor  wilfully  suffer  any  to  be  done  by  others,  and 
if  any  to  his  knowledge  be  intended,  he  shall  give  his  master 
seasonable  notice  thereof.  He  shall  not  waste  the  goods  of  his 
said  master,  nor  lend  them  unlawfully  to  any ;  at  cards,  dice  or 
any  unlawful  game  he  shall  not  play,  fornication  he  shall  not 
commit,  nor  matrimony  contract  during  the  said  term ;  taverns, 
ale-houses  or  places  of  gaming  he  shall  not  haunt  or  frequent; 
from  the  service  of  his  said  master  he  shall  not  absent  himself, 
but  in  all  things  and  at  all  times  he  shall  carry  himself  and  be- 
have as  a  good  and  faithful  Apprentice  ought,  during  the  whole 
time  or  term  aforesaid — and  the  said  James  Parker  Esqr  on  his 
part  doth  hereby  promise,  covenant  and  agree  to  teach  and  in- 
struct the  said  apprentice  or  cause  him  to  be  instructed  in  the 
art  or  trade  of  husbandman  by  the  best  way  and  means  he  can, 
and  also  to  teach  and  instruct  the  said  apprentice  or  cause  him 
to  be  taught  and  instructed  to  read  and  write  and  cypher  to  the 
Rule  of  Three  if  said  apprentice  is  capable  to  learn  and  shall 
faithfully  find  and  provide  for  the  said  apprentice  good  and 
sufficient  meat,  drink,  clothing,  lodging  and  other  necessaries 
fit  and  convenient  for  such  an  apprentice  during  the  term  afore- 
said, and  at  the  Expiration  thereof  shall  give  unto  the  said  ap- 
prentice two  good  suits  of  wearing  apparel,  one  for  Lord's  Day 
and  the  other  for  working  days  and  also  Eighty  Dollars  in  good 
curant  money  of  this  Commonwealth  at  the  end  of  said  term. 
In  testimony  whereof  the  said  parties  have  hereunto  interchange- 
ably set  their  hands  and  seals  this  sixteenth  day  of  October  in 
the  year  of  our  Lord  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  twenty." 

The  food  of  our  forefathers  has  always  had  a  certain  enchant- 
ment. Who  can  read  of  the  chicken  roasting  on  the  spit  before 
the  open  fire  without  wanting  a  taste ;  or  who  can  listen  to  tales 
of  one's  grandmother  of  the  great  baking  of  those  days  without 
a  feeling  of  longing?  In  hunting  over  dry  deeds  in  the  Court 
House  in  Cambridge,  I  came  across  one  which  interested  me  very 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND  7 

much,  as  it  gave  an  enlightening  touch  to  the  question  which  to 
all  housekeepers  is  a  most  vivid  one — the  food  problem. 

In  1823,  Hezekiah  Patterson,  who  lived  in  the  eastern  part 
of  Shirley,  being  old  and  tired  of  the  responsibility  of  farming, 
sold  his  forty-eight  acres  of  land  and  his  house  to  Thomas 
Hazen  Clark,  in  exchange  for  the  support  of  himself  and  his 
wife,  Jane,  for  the  rest  of  their  lives.  They  reserved  room 
enough  for  their  horse  and  its  hay  in  the  barn,  and  room  enough 
in  the  house  for  themselves,  and  then  gave  an  itemized  account 
of  what  they  called  "support"  for  one  year. 

"6  bushels  of  rye 

6  bushels  of  indian  Corn 

1  bbl.  white  flour 
200  Ibs.  Shoat  pork 
100  Ibs.  beef. 

1/2  quintal  of  Cod-fish 
60  Ibs.  of  butter 
60  Ibs.  of  cheese 

2  Ibs.  of  SouChong  tea 
2  Ibs;  chocolate 

1  Ib.  Coffee 

5  Ibs.  loaf  sugar 

30  Ibs.  of  brown  sugar 

10  gals.  New  England  Rum 

1  gal.  West  Indian  Rum 

6  gal.  Molasses 

2  bushels  of  Salt 

1/2  bushel  of  white  beans 

15  bushels  potatoes 

1/2  of  all  the  cider  and  enough  wood  for  the  fire. ' ' 

This  yearly  menu  hardly  suggests  variety,  but  it  was  at  least 
sweet  and  substantial. 

While  the  men  worked  in  the  fields  and  tended  the  cattle,  the 
women  had  their  many  duties,  too.  Their  energies  were  de- 
manded for  so  many  things  that  a  housekeeper  in  those  days 
need  be  an  expert  along  many  lines.  Men  in  those  days  ate 
simple  things,  and  simple  cooking,  like  very  simple  clothes,  must 


8  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

be  so  much  the  better  intrinsically.  The  food  that  is  simple 
must  be  well  seasoned  or  well  cooked  to  tempt,  while  a  compli- 
cated dish  disguises  its  poor  cooking  by  its  high  seasoning,  as  a 
badly  cut  dress  may  be  made  to  look  well  by  its  many  furbe- 
lows. Baking  in  a  brick  oven  was  an  art.  The  oven  was  filled 
with  wood,  lighted  and  burned  out,  making  the  bricks  of  the 
right  degree  of  heat.  Then  the  oven  must  be  cleaned.  At  the 
farthest  end  were  put  the  beans,  followed  by  the  brown  bread, 
Indian  pudding,  white  bread,  pies,  and  cake.  They  were  al- 
lowed to  stay,  and  were  taken  out  in  the  reverse  order  from 
that  in  which  I  have  named  them.  All  other  cooking  must  be 
done  over  the  coals  of  a  great  wood  fire,  or  in  a  tin  kitchen 
placed  on  the  hearth.  We  may  imagine  that  the  table  service 
in  a  country  farmhouse  was  not  complicated.  It  was  etiquette 
to  eat  with  the  knife,  as  forks  had  not  come  into  use.  Pewter 
and  old  blue  iron  ware  abounded ;  copper,  also,  was  much  used, 
and  must  have  added  color  to  the  kitchen.  After  the  inner 
man  was  satisfied,  the  wife  must  still  clothe  her  husband,  her- 
self, and  her  children.  Cloth  could,  of  course,  be  bought,  but 
as  a  rule  was  far  too  expensive  for  anything  but  a  farmer's 
very  best.  Homespun  was  the  general  wear,  and  to  make  home- 
spun the  wool  had  to  be  taken  from  their  own  sheep  oftentimes 
to  make  their  clothes,  and  all  the  process  after  the  shearing  and 
washing  fell  to  the  woman's  share.  I  believe  that  there  were 
itinerant  tailoresses  later  on,  but  of  course  only  the  well-to-do 
could  afford  such  luxuries.  The  flax,  too,  had  to  be  spun  and 
woven.  Many  houses  throughout  the  country  still  show  the  old 
loom  room,  where  the  loom  stood  for  generations.  Many  parts 
of  old  looms  can  still  be  found,  reeds,  shuttles,  needles,  and 
heddles. 

Stockings  had  to  be  knit  and  many  endless  tasks  performed 
to  keep  the  family  warm  and  dry.  Often  the  man  of  the  family 
did  part  of  the  cobbling  of  his  children 's  shoes  and  his  own. 

Candles  must  be  made  foe  light,  and  candle  dipping  was  a 
hard  and  dirty  task.  It  took  skill  to  make  them  round  and 
even.  Later  molds  came  in  fashion  and  made  the  task  easier 
and  less  dirty.  Soap  had  to  be  made  for  the  family  use.  These 
were  tasks  in  addition  to  the  ordinary  sweeping,  cooking,  and 
housework  which  every  house  demands.  Floors  were  scrubbed 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND  9 

with  soap  and  sand  until  they  were  white — and  they  were  kept 
so  by  the  thrifty  housekeeper. 

Nearly  every  town  had  a  man  whose  occupation  must  have 
been  picturesque — the  hatter — who  made  those  enormous  beaver 
hats  that  looked  almost  like  fur,  that  men  wore  years  ago.  It 
took  him  a  long  time  to  make  a  hat,  and  when  it  was  done  the 
owner  wore  it  proportionately  long. 

We  New  Englanders  are  all  familiar  with  the  costumes  of  a 
hundred  years  ago.  The  Shakers  still  wear  them  when  they 
dress  in  their  uniform.  When  Mother  Ann  Lee  founded  the 
order,  about  1793,  the  clothes  as  you  see  them  now  were  the 
ordinary  clothes  in  vogue  then.  They  have  never  changed  the 
style,  unless  of  late  years  some  of  them  have  grown  more  worldly 
and  have  adopted  modern  dress.  And  now,  after  a  hundred 
years  of  disuse,  the  stylish  cloak  of  a  former  century  is  again  in 
demand. 

And  when  all  the  work  was  done,  they  gathered  around  the 
great  fireplace,  in  the  candle-light.  The  light,  even  until  kero- 
sene came  to  be  used,  was  very  poor,  and  in  those  days  one  read 
with  the  paper  or  book  in  one  hand  and  the  candle  in  the  other, 
so  that  it  might  be  moved  back  and  forth  before  the  print.  The 
picture  that  one  has  is  the  coziest  in  the  world,  but  contempor- 
aries tell  us  that  the  reality  was  often  far  from  the  ideal.  The 
great  chimneys,  with  their  huge  fires,  created  a  draught  which 
brought  the  outer  cold  into  the  room,  and  fires  really  warmed  but 
a  small  area.  Yet  here,  around  this  kitchen  fire,  centered  all  the 
life  of  the  home,  all  its  comfort  and  its  homeliness. 

Life  was  not  all  a  grind  to  these  good  people,  for  they  had 
their  social  gatherings,  and  varied  ones,  too.  First  and  fore- 
most stood  the  church  with  its  services,  the  social  center  of  the 
town.  But  when  we  remember  that  country  towns  were  nearly 
isolated  from  the  outer  world ;  that  the  only  travel  was  by  the 
slow  method  of  stage-coach  or  private  carriage,  and  was  seldom 
indulged  in ;  it  seems  natural  that  the  people  should  have  turned 
to  the  church,  where  all  were  welcome — in  fact,  where  all  must 
go,  or  be  labored  with  by  the  minister  and  deacons.  So  it  came 
to  pass  that  this  was  the  one  thing  in  which  all  were  interested, 
in  which  all  had  a  share.  When  we  remember,  too,  how  large  a 
part  religion  played  in  the  minds  and  hearts  of  our  ancestors, 


10  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

it  is  inevitable  that  the  church  should  stand  as  the  most  im- 
portant and  the  unifying  factor  of  their  lives. 

On  Sundays  nearly  every  one  went  to  meeting  and  stayed  all 
day.  No  one  cooked  on  Sunday,  and  all  the  food  for  that  day 
was  cold.  The  women  were  expected  to  go  to  church  all  day,  as 
well  as  the  men,  so  that  the  Saturday  baking,  which  tradition 
still  holds  many  a  modern  household  to  regard,  was  then  a  mat- 
ter of  urgent  need  as  well  as  a  matter  of  conscience.  The  man 
who  had  relatives  living  near  the  church,  or  who  lived  near  by, 
was  indeed  lucky,  because  a  warm  fire  at  noon  might  then  be  his. 
Otherwise  the  dinner  was  carried  and  eaten  in  the  church  in 
winter,  or  outside  in  summer.  JEow  many  of  us  would  submit 
to  the  discomfort  of  sitting  all  day  in  an  unheated  building, 
regaling  ourselves  at  noon  with  cold  food,  with  the  thermometer 
many  times  in  the  neighborhood  of  zero?  Yet  duty  led  them 
and  personal  comfort  did  not  enter  into  their  consideration. 
We  may  hope  that  the  dish  of  gossip,  taken  with  their  dinner, 
compensated  for  much  which  might  otherwise  have  been  unbear- 
able. Perhaps  this  human  companionship  softened  the  denun- 
ciations and  threats  of  the  two  sermons.  The  church,  aside  from 
its  spiritual  teachings,  furnished  a  place  in  which  all  the  town 
met  once  a  week.  It  was  more  or  less  political  in  a  broader  sense, 
for  there  matters  of  national  politics,  state  politics,  and  even 
those  of  local  importance  were  discussed  by  the  minister.  As 
he  was  the  best  educated  man,  his  opinion  and  its  expression  very 
often  formed  that  of  the  majority  of  those  of  the  other  men  in 
town. 

In  the  church,  also,  were  held  the  town  meetings,  with  their 
serious  and  sometimes  humorous  debates,  which  furnished  a 
means  of  growth  and  expression  to  others.  It  was  this  training 
which  enabled  the  colonies  to  withstand  the  mother  country. 
Men  had  learned  to  think  in  a  logical  way,  and  to  express  their 
thoughts.  They  were  keen  to  find  the  weak  places  in  an  argu- 
ment and  to  search  out  sophistries.  When  England  attempted 
to  cheat  their  sense  of  justice,  she  found  a  community  made  up 
of  citizens,  not  of  peasants. 

The  town  was  divided  into  districts;  the  center  of  each  was 
the  school.  Each  district  met  and  decided  its  own  educational 
problems  as  best  suited  it;  each  engaged  its  own  teachers,  and 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND  11 

disbursed  its  own  share  of  the  school  appropriations.  Bitter 
and  often  sanguinary  were  the  fights  over  this  important  ques- 
tion; many  and  hard  were  the  debates  as  to  whether  it  should 
be  a  ' '  writing  school "  or  a  * '  reading  school, ' '  and  how  they  could 
make  their  share  of  the  funds  hold  out. 

These  districts  also  took  care  of  their  own  roads,  and  most  men, 
rather  than  pay  their  taxes  in  cash,  "worked  out"  their  taxes 
on  the  roads.  So  far  as  one  can  gather  from  the  records  the 
roads  were  treated  a  good  deal  like  a  plowed  field,  and  must 
have  been  exceedingly  poor.  They  were  plowed  every  spring 
and  heaped  up  into  the  middle,  with  the  intention  of  making  a 
watershed. 

The  roads  were  a  constant  annoyance  at  all  seasons — mud 
spring  and  fall,  dust  in  the  summer,  and  drifting  snow  in  win- 
ter. Complaint  was  made  in  a  nearby  town  that  a  certain  man 
named  Hildreth  had  put  his  stone  wall  so  far  into  the  road  that 
the  drifting  snow  made  it  impassable.  The  road  commissioner 
warned  Hildreth  to  remove  the  wall,  which  he  refused  to  do. 
So  the  wall  was  moved  back  by  those  working  on  the  road. 
Hildreth  tore  it  down  in  the  night  and  rebuilt  it  on  the  former 
site.  The  wall  was  torn  down  again  by  the  road  commissioner, 
and  replaced  where  it  belonged.  It  was  then  guarded  by  men 
until  the  town  met  and  voted  that  Hildreth  leave  his  wall  where 
it  should  be,  and  write  a  letter  of  apology  to  the  commissioner. 
All  this  Hildreth  did  with  a  bad  grace. 

A  domestic  amusement  was  a  house  or  barn  raising.  To  this 
about  every  one  in  the  town  went,  the  men  to  do  the  actual 
raising,  the  women  and  girls  to  prepare  and  serve  the  feast 
which  followed.  Their  hospitality  was  generally  lavish.  To 
one  who  has  never  partaken  of  the  delights  which  can  be  baked 
in  a  brick  oven,  the  tales  of  those  so  blessed  seem  more  or  less 
like  those  of  the  ''Arabian  Nights."  A  halo,  formed  of  the 
reminiscences  of  gay  good  times  and  the  appetite  of  youth,  is 
put  around  these  pleasures  of  a  bygone  day,  making  them  shine 
with  a  preternatural  light.  And  at  these  raisings,  besides  the 
baking  and  the  roast  meats,  was  there  not  cider  and  Medford 
rum  to  make  glad  the  heart  of  man  ? 

Funerals  and  weddings  were  also  legitimate  social  times,  the 
former  to  afford  the  luxury  of  woe,  the  latter  of  unalloyed  joy. 


12  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Then  there  were  the  kitchen  dances  in  the  winter,  and  each  man 
took  his  turn  at  entertaining,  and  showed  with  pride  the  good 
things  that  his  wife  could  make.  The  good  times,  as  we  look 
back  upon  them,  seem  so  simple  and  wholesome,  they  were  en- 
tered into  with  such  a  spirit  of  enthusiasm  and  expectancy,  that 
it  makes  one  wish  that  one  could  now  have  so  whole-hearted  a 
good  time  from  so  little.  It  seems  almost  as  if  the  hard  work 
and  drudgery  of  daily  life  gave  a  fine  zest  to  their  amusements. 

Later  on  the  Lyceum  came  to  try  the  sinews  of  men  in  debate, 
came  to  prove  the  literary  ability  of  their  wives  and  daughters. 
They  debated  on  everything  under  the  sun — huge  philosophical 
subjects  jostled  trivialities;  questions  of  morals,  religion,  and 
politics  followed  discussions  of  farming  and  cattle  raising.  The 
records  of  such  a  Lyceum  lie  before  me.  The  members  began 
their  work  by  this  debate,  "Resolved,  that  a  scolding  wife  is  a 
greater  evil  than  a  smoking  house. ' '  They  decided  in  the  affirm- 
ative, and  then  passed  to  this,  "Resolved,  that  the  old  man  in 
the  story  in  Webster's  spelling  book  was  justified  in  throwing 
stones  at  the  boy. ' '  They  next  discussed  the  morality  of  giving 
prizes  in  the  schools.  Excitement  often  waxed  high,  and  per- 
sonalities were  dealt  in,  but  the  end  of  the  evening  brought  calm. 
It  was  devoted  to  the  literary  efforts  of  the  women  of  the  Lyceum. 
These  consisted  of  recitations,  readings,  and  original  essays. 

So  our  fathers  on  the  farm  varied  their  hard  work  with  fun 
in  much  smaller  quantities  than  we  enjoy  to-day.  But  in  those 
days  the  actual  struggle  was  less;  a  man  toiled  for  his  daily 
bread  itself  with  no  competitors  but  the  soil,  the  weather,  and 
his  own  temperament.  Now  a  man  works  at  his  specialty  to 
outdo  his  competitors,  to  get  his  goods  to  the  market  quicker  and 
in  better  condition,  to  sell  that  he  may  buy,  not  to  grow  and 
tend  that  he  may  eat  and  be  warm. 

Through  all  their  life  there  is  a  note  of  contentment,  and  I 
think  that  deep  in  the  heart  of  most  modern  farmers  that  same 
note  could  be  struck.  For  after  all  is  said,  the  actual  owner- 
ship of  a  large  piece  of  mother  earth  is  a  continual  source  of 
peace;  and  the  freedom  from  the  oversight  and  commands  of 
others,  to  be  at  no  man's  beck  and  call,  lends  a  dignity  to  the 
farmer,  and  enhances  his  self-respect,  until  he  feels  himself  and 
is  the  equal  of  any  in  the  land. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND  13 

A  rhyme  on  an  old  English  pitcher  shows  that  this  feeling  has 
been  through  many,  many  years  the  underlying  one  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  farmers  : 

Let  the  mighty  and  great 

Koll  in  splendor  and  state, 

I  envy  them  not,  I  declare  it. 

I  eat  my  own  lamb, 

My  own  chicken  and  ham, 

I  shear  my  own  sheep  and  wear  it. 

I  have  lawns,  I  have  bowers, 

I  have  fruits,  I  have  flowers, 

The  lark  is  my  morning  charmer  ; 

So  you  jolly  dogs  now, 

Here's  God  bless  the  plow  — 

Long  life  and  content  to  the  farmer. 


INTEMPERANCE  IN  COLONIAL  DAYS  1 

PERCY   WELLS   BIDWELL 

intemperance  of  the  colonial  period,"  says  Charles 
Francis  Adams,  "  is  a  thing  now  difficult  to  realize  ;  and  it  seems 
to  have  pervaded  all  classes  from  the  clergy  to  the  pauper." 
We  have  -already  remarked  the  large  consumption  of  cider  in 
the  farmers'  families  and  have  commented  upon  the  importance 
of  the  retail  sale  of  stronger  liquors  in  the  business  of  the  country 
stores  and  taverns.  Every  important  occasion  in  home  or  church 
life,  every  rural  festivity  was  utilized  as  an  opportunity  for 
generous  indulgence  in  intoxicants.  Neither  the  haying-season 
in  early  summer,  nor  the  hog-killing  season  at  the  end  of  autumn 
could  be  successfully  managed  without  the  aid  of  liberal  pota- 
tions of  "black-strap"  and  "stone-wall."  Husking  bees,  house- 
raisings,  training  days,  and  even  christenings,  burials  and  or- 

i  Adapted  from  "Rural  Economy  in  New  England  at  the  Beginning  of 
the  Nineteenth  Century."  Publication  of  the  Connecticut  Academy  of  So- 
cial Science,  1916,  pp.  374-77. 


14  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

dinations  were  often  disgraced  by  the  drunkenness  of  partici- 
pants. 

The  craving  for  stimulants  with  its  disastrous  results  on  the 
fortunes  of  individuals  and  on  the  general  moral  tone  of  the 
community  proceeded  partly  from  the  coarse  and  unvaried  diet 
of  the  farming  population,  and  probably  to  a  larger  extent,  from 
a  desire  to  relieve  at  least  temporarily  the  dreary  monotony  of 
village  life.  There  are  always  two  opposing  views  current 
among  the  older  generation  concerning  the  relative  virtues  of 
their  early  days  as  compared  with  the  conditions  which  they 
see  about  them  in  their  declining  years.  Some  look  back  to  a 
sort  of  Golden  Age  and  view  all  the  features  of  the  past  through 
rose-colored  spectacles.  Others  with  a  more  optimistic  frame  of 
mind  are  quite  willing  to  admit  that  the  passage  of  the  years 
has  brought  improvement  along  many  lines  and  do  not  hesitate 
to  glory  in  the  progress  that  has  been  achieved  under  their  eyes 
during  a  long  life. 

There  are  probably  elements  of  truth  in  both  views,  but  as 
far  as  the  general  features  of  social  life  are  concerned  and  their 
effect  in  stimulating  or  in  depressing  the  individual,  the  latter 
view  seems  to  be  more  in  accord  with  the  facts  as  we  know  them. 

The  Rev.  Mr.  Storrs,  in  reviewing  a  pastorate  of  fifty  years 
in  the  town  of  Braintree,  Mass.,  said:  "And  when  it  is  remem- 
bered that  fifty  years  ago,  and  for  many  after  years,  no  post 
office  blessed  the  town,  nor  public  conveyance  for  letters,  papers, 
or  persons,  was  to  be  had,  even  semi-weekly,  except  through  vil- 
lages two  miles  distant ;  that  but  for  the  occasional  rumbling  of 
a  butcher's  cart,  or  a  tradesman's  wagon,  the  fall  of  the  hammer 
on  the  lap-stone,  or  the  call  of  the  plowman  to  his  refractory 
team,  our  streets  had  well  nigh  rivaled  the  graveyard  in  silence, 
it  can  scarcely  surprise  one,  that  our  knowledge  of  the  outer 
world  was  imperfect,  nor  that  general  intelligence  and  enterprise 
was  held  at  a  discount ;  and  if  powder,  kettle  drums,  and  conch- 
shells,  proclaimed  the  celebration  of  a  wedding ;  or  if  wine,  and 
spirits  more  dangerous  than  any  from  the  vasty  deep,  were  im- 
bibed at  funerals  to  quiet  the  nerves  and  move  the  lachrymals 
of  attendants ;  or  if  rowdyism  and  fisticuffs  triumphed  over  law 
and  order  on  town  meeting,  muster  and  election  days,  ...  it  was 
but  the  legitimate  overflow  of  combined  ignorance  and  heaven- 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND  15 

daring  recklessness.  Those  days  are  passed  and  shame  throws 
its  thick  mantle  over  them. ' ' 

An  isolated  community  always  tends  toward  social  degenera- 
tion, and  the  drunkenness,  rowdyism,  and  general  coarseness  of 
manners  of  the  inland  towns  at  this  time  were  but  premonitions 
of  the  more  disastrous  results  which  might  be  expected  from 
economic  and  social  stagnation.  At  no  time  in  these  commun- 
ities was  there  a  distinct  criminal  class,  of  the  type  now  tech- 
nically known  as  degenerate ;  but  petty  crimes,  stealing,  assaults 
and  disturbances  were  of  frequent  occurrence.  There  are  many 
indications  that  the  influence  of  the  church  was  decadent.  Up 
to  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  ecclesiastical  or- 
ganization had  secured,  by  means  of  a  censorship  of  the  private 
life  of  its  members  so  inquisitorial  as  to  seem  nowadays  intoler- 
able, fairly  submissive  adherence  to  a  rigid  code  of  morality. 
With  the  decline  in  the  authority  of  the  church  in  matters  of 
doctrine  came  <also  a  weakening  in  its  control  over  the  conduct  of 
its  adherents. 

Another  cause  of  laxity  in  morals,  of  probably  greater  im- 
portance, was  the  general  spirit  of  lawlessness  spreading  over 
the  country  after  the  Revolution,  which  seems  especially  to  have 
affected  the  country  districts.  The  soldiers  returning  from  the 
war  found  it  hard  to  settle  down  and  get  their  living  honestly  in 
the  previous  humdrum  routine.  They  brought  back  with  them 
new  and  often  vicious  habits  which  the  rest  of  the  community 
imitated.  Then,  in  the  interval  between  the  overturn  of  the 
regularly  constituted  colonial  authorities  and  the  establishment 
of  the  national  government  under  the  new  federal  constitution, 
there  was  a  period  of  semi-anarchy,  when  obedience  to  any  sort 
of  law  was  difficult  to  enforce.  The  disrespect  for  authority  in 
both  church  and  state  which  arose  from  these  conditions  could 
not  fail  to  have  a  distinctly  bad  influence  on  the  moral  conditions 
in  inland  towns.  In  the  disturbances  of  those  days  the  inland 
farmer  was  generally  to  be  found  on  the  side  of  rebellion,  and 
active  in  opposing  a  reestablishment  of  law  and  order. 

Too  much  emphasis  must  not  be  laid  upon  the  dark  features  of 
the  community  life  of  these  times.  Undoubtedly  there  were 
many  advantages  arising  from  the  homogeneous  construction  of 
society,  from  the  uniformity  of  the  inhabitants  in  race,  religion 


16  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

and  manners  and  from  the  absence  of  class  distinc- 
tions based  on  differences  in  wealth.  The  inland  villages 
were  by  no  means  entirely  lacking  the  opportunities  for  helpful 
and  stimulating  social  t  intercourse ;  but  it  was  from  the  home 
rather  than  from  the  community  life  that  the  principal  virtues 
of  the  agricultural  population,  of  which  their  descendants  have 
been  so  justly  proud,  were  chiefly  derived. 


WHAT  AWAITS  RURAL  NEW  ENGLAND  1 

THOMAS   NIXON    CARVER 

MY  most  salient  impression  was  that  agriculture  as  an  inde- 
pendent industry  able  in  itself  to  maintain  a  community  does 
not  exist  in  the  hilly  parts  of  New  England.  Outside  of  such 
exceptionally  fertile  sections  as  the  Connecticut  Valley,  the 
farmers  engage  in  such  occupations  as  lumbering  and  keeping 
summer-boarders,  often  carrying  on  farming  merely  to  supply 
their  own  tables  with  vegetables  and  their  horses  and  cows  with 
forage.  I  found  few  farmers  who  could  secure  sufficient  revenue 
even  from  sales  of  hay  and  milk,  the  most  profitable  of  New  Eng- 
land farm  products. 

These  facts,  however,  do  not  indicate  a  decline  in  agriculture. 
Farming  never  was  a  self-sufficing  industry  in  New  England. 
In  the  days  of  so-called  prosperity  domestic  manufactures  were 
carried  on  in  farm-houses.  The  transfer  of  manufacturing  from 
the  farms  to  the  towns  accounts  as  much  for  the  decline  of  rural 
prosperity  as  anything  else — the  rise  of  agriculture  in  the  West, 
for  example.  Moreover,  the  development  of  farming,  dairying, 
and  market  gardening  near  the  cities  offsets  the  decline  in  the 
remote  districts. 

Now,  domestic  manufactures  can  never  be  revived  in  New 
England,  though  an  attempt  is  being  made  to  revive  them  at 
Deerfield,  Mass.  Summer  boarders  cannot  support  the  whole 
country,  nor  can  lumbering.  But,  why  should  not  northern 
New  England  become  a  great  stock-raising  country?  The  land 
has  become  so  cheap,  and  the  grazing  lands  of  the  far  West  have 

i  Adapted  from  World's  Work,  9;  5748-52,  Jan.,  1905. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND  17 

become  relatively  so  dear,  that  New  England  offers  advantages 
to  sheep-  and  cattle-breeders.  One  acre  of  New  Hampshire  hill- 
side pasture  is  worth  three  acres  of  grazing  lands  of  western 
Kansas,  Colorado  or  Montana.  There  is  plenty  of  water,  so  that 
one  western  problem  does  not  exist.  Fifty  men  with  whom  I 
talked  on  my  journey  agreed  that  New  England  is  a  good  cattle 
country,  but  no  one  knew  why  more  cattle  are  not  raised.  I  be- 
lieve that  the  two  chief  obstacles  are :  first,  the  difficulties  of  pro- 
viding winter  forage,  and,  second,  the  small  size  of  the  average 
farm. 

When  a  man  owns  a  farm  of  from  fifty  to  one  hundred  acres, 
he  must  plow  some  of  it  if  he  expects  to  make  a  living  from  it, 
but  plowing  these  steep  and  rocky  hillsides  is  ruinous,  for  the 
rains  wash  away  more  fertility  than  the  crops  extract.  But  no 
farmers '  family  can  live  from  the  produce  of  so  small  a  farm  if  it 
is  used  only  for  pasturing.  If  the  farms  ran  from  400  to  600 
acres  each,  enough  stock  could  be  pastured  on  each  one  to  sup- 
port in  comfort  the  average  farmer's  family.  There  would  still 
remain,  however,  the  question  of  winter  forage,  for  these  hillsides 
can  not  even  produce  hay  to  advantage — that  is,  hay-making  ma- 
chinery can  not  be  used.  Profitable  stock-raising  on  a  farm  of 
this  kind  would  therefore  be  limited  by  the  amount  of  level 
land,  relatively  free  from  stones,  upon  which  hay-making  ma- 
chinery could  be  used. 

But  there  is  another  possibility.  In  Europe,  wherever  stock- 
breeding  has  developed  on  a  large  scale,  cattle  are  driven  from 
the  hills  to  the  valleys  in  the  fall  and  from  the  valleys  to  the  hills 
in  the  spring.  The  owners  of  pasture  lands  in  the  hills  and 
mountains  buy  their  stock  in  the  spring,  pasture  them  during 
the  summers,  and  sell  them  in  the  fall  to  the  feeders  in  the  val- 
leys ;  or  the  feeders  in  the  valleys  drive  their  stock  in  the  spring 
to  the  hills  and  mountains  for  summer  pasturage  and  bring  them 
back  in  the  fall  to  be  wintered  on  the  forage  grown  on  the  valley 
land.  The  next  fifty  years  may  see  the  development  of  a  con- 
siderable industry  of  this  kind  in  New  England.  Some  experi- 
ments are  already  being  made.  Mr.  J.  W.  Clark,  of  Wilmot, 
N.'H.,  was  formerly  a  sheep-rancher  in  Montana.  He  recently 
sold  his  interests  there  and  returned  to  New  Hampshire  to  start 
a  sheep-ranch.  He  has  acquired  about  one  thousand  acres  of  the 


18  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

ordinary  rocky,  hillside  pasture  land,  which,  he  holds,  is  much 
more  productive  than  the  Montana  land,  and  about  as  cheap. 

Almost  universally,  the  prosperity  of  western  agriculture  and 
the  poverty  of  New  England  farming  are  explained  by  the  dif- 
ference in  the  fertility  of  the  soil.  Yet  this  difference  is  offset 
in  part  by  the  better  markets  in  the  East.  If  a  western  farmer 
should  try  to  make  a  living  at  ordinary  staple  farming  on  so 
small  a  farm  as  the  average  one  in  New  England,  using  the  prim- 
itive New  England  methods,  he  would  have  as  hard  a  time  as 
the  New  England  farmer  to  make  a  living.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  the  New  Englander  would  use  as  much  land  as  the  western 
farmer,  and  have  modern  labor-saving  machinery,  he  would 
probably  be  able  to  make  as  good  a  living.  A  young  man  wish- 
ing to  start  out  as  a  farmer  would  do  better  to  invest  in  New 
England  land  than  in  western  land.  A  good  Iowa  farm  will 
cost  from  $75  to  $100  .an  acre ;  good  New  England  pasture  land 
from  $10  to  $25  an  acre. 

New  England  writers  on  agriculture  have  made  the  mistake 
of  looking  to  Europe  rather  than  to  the  West  for  their  models. 
They  have  held  up  as  examples  to  the  New  England  farmers  Eu- 
ropean peasants  who  cultivate  a  few  acres  to  a  high  degree  of 
intensity  to  yield  larger  crops  per  acre.  But  they  forget  that 
these  mean  small  crops  per  man.  Where  labor  is  cheap  and  land 
dear,  as  in  the  Netherlands  or  in  the  valley  of  the  Po,  it  is  eco- 
nomical to  raise  crops  with  much  labor  and  little  land.  In 
the  United  States,  where  land  is  cheap  and  labor  dear,  the  op- 
posite method  is  better.  And  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  conditions 
will  never  arise  in  the  United  States  where  labor  is  so  cheap 
and  land  correspondingly  so  dear,  as  in  densely  populated  Eu- 
rope. Since  the  price  of  labor  in  New  England  conforms  pretty 
closely  to  the  price  in  the  West,  and  general  social  conditions  are 
much  the  same,  prosperous  parts  of  the  West  ought  to  be  the 
New  England  models  rather  than  Europe.  With  this  idea  in 
view,  the  managers  of  New  England  agricultural  colleges  have 
begun  to  draw  on  the  West  for  teachers. 

The  nearness  of  eastern  markets,  too,  is  a  very  appreciable 
advantage  to  New  England.  On  the  railroads  covering  the  sec- 
tion, run  the  milk-trains  which  enter  Boston  every  morning. 
The  farmers  along  any  of  these  railroads  deliver  cans  of  milk 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND  19 

at  the  nearest  station  every  morning,  and  receive  the  cans  there 
again  in  the  evening,  receiving  from  twenty  to  thirty  cents  for 
each  eight-and-one-half-quart  can,  though  Boston  consumers  pay 
a  considerable  advance  on  that  price.  A  western  farmer  who 
could  secure  such  a  price  would  regard  himself  as  opulent. 
Again,  Boston  is  one  of  the  best  apple  markets  in  the  country, 
but  the  market  is  supplied  largely  from  New  York  and  Michigan. 
Yet  New  England  is  an  excellent  apple  country.  Every  year 
seedling  apple-trees  grow  without  planting  and  flourish  without 
care.  Even  where  grafting  is  done,  it  has  been  the  custom  to 
graft  only  such  trees  as  come  up  themselves  along  old  stone  walls 
and  other  such  places.  Apple-growing,  then,  is  a  New  England 
possibility. 

In  the  Connecticut  River  Valley,  where  extensive  cultivation 
is  possible,  the  agricultural  prospects  are  very  hopeful.  I  saw 
many  fields  of  corn  which  would  astonish  a  Kansas  farmer.  The 
census  returns  show  a  larger  yield  of  corn  per  acre  in  New  Eng- 
land than  in  a  great  part  of  the  Corn  Belt  itself.  It  is  grown, 
however,  in  small  fields  highly  fertilized  and  intensively  culti- 
vated, whereas  the  western  farmer  never  even  hoes  his  corn,  yet 
he  grows  the  largest  crop  per  man  in  the  world. 

On  the  whole  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  the  decline 
in  New  England  agriculture  is  at  an  end.  With  the  practical 
exhaustion  of  free  public  land  in  the  far  West,  the  rise  in  the 
price  of  land  in  the  middle  West,  and  the  development  of  cities 
for  their  markets,  the  consequent  rise  in  the  price  of  agricultural 
products  will  give  a  value  to  New  England  farms  which  they 
have  not  had  for  many  years.  It  is  to  be  hoped,  however,  that 
the  process  of  "abandoning  farms"  will  continue,  if  this  simply 
means  that  several  small  farms  are  to  be  used  in  one  fair-sized 
farm  upon  which  the  farmer  can  economically  use  superior  draft 
animals  and  labor-saving  machines;  for  New  England  methods 
of  agriculture  are  fifty  years  behind  the  times. 


20  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

FACTS  NEW  ENGLAND  FACES  * 

FROM  1860  to  1910,  828  New  England  towns  lost  in  population 
337,086. 

From  1860  to  1910,  New  England's  improved  farm  lands  under 
cultivation  decreased  from  12,215,771  to  7,112,698  acres,  a  loss 
of  42  per  cent. 

From  1860  to  1909,  New  England  wage-earners  increased  from 
391,836  to  1,101,290,  a  gain  of  359  per  cent. 

From  1860  to  1909  New  England's  population  increased  from 
3,110,572  to  6,552,681. 

New  England  is  now  producing  less  than  25  per  cent,  of  her 
food  supplies,  the  other  75  per  cent,  and  over  coming  from  with- 
out her  borders. 


AGRICULTURE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND  2 

KENYON   L.    BUTTERFIELD 

NEW  ENGLAND  as  a  whole  is  distinctively  an  urban  region. 
While  northern  New  England,  comprising  Maine,  New  Hamp- 
shire, and  Vermont,  has  few  large  cities,  populous  southern  New 
England,  which  includes  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island  and  Con- 
necticut, is  dominantly  urban.  For  example,  the  percentage  of 
rural  population  in  Massachusetts  is  less  than  ten.  Metropolitan 
Boston,  an  urban  center  of  perhaps  1,250,000  people,  is  the  great 
consuming  center  of  the  region,  'and  it  is  supplemented  by  a 
large  group  of  important  residence  and  manufacturing  cities  of 
lesser  size  not  far  away  from  this  center,  as  well  as  scattered  all 
over  New  England.  At  least  5,000,000  of  the  6,000,000  people 
in  New  England  are  consumers  rather  than  producers  of  food. 

New  England  grows  only  a  fraction  of  its  food  supply.  Ac- 
curate figures  are  not  available,  but  it  has  been  estimated  that 
probably  this  region  has  to  purchase  at  least  seventy-five  per 
cent,  of  its  food  supply  from  outside  its  borders.  Furthermore, 

1  Adapted  from  "Real  Preparedness  at  its  Vital  Point— The  Food  Sup- 
ply."    Published   by   Hampden   County   Improvement   League,    Springfield, 
Mass. 

2  Adapted  from  Breeder's  Gazette,  72:  1154,  December,  1917.     Chicago. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND  21 

New  England  never  will  grow  all  its  food.  Wheat  does  well 
enough  in  New  England,  but  it  does  not  pay  to  grow  it.  New 
England's  bread  will  always  be  dependent  upon  outside  sources 
for  the  supply  of  flour.  Unquestionably  the  supply  of  New  Eng- 
land-grown meat  can  be  profitably  very  greatly  increased,  par- 
ticularly pork,  mutton,  and  fish.  It  is  quite  conceivable  that 
New  England  will  in  time  supply  a  very  large  proportion  of 
these  meats  from  within  its  own  borders.  The  beef  supply  can 
also  be  increased,  but  it  is  doubtful  whether  any  large  percentage 
of  the  consumptive  demand  will  ever  be  grown  in  New  England. 

It  seems  reasonable  to  expect  that  New  England  may  grow 
a  large  share  of  certain  other  items  among  its  food  needs.  It 
is  an  ideal  region  for  both  orchard  and  small  fruits,  and  the 
same  is  true  of  most  vegetables.  Apparently  it  will  be  possible, 
at  least  from  the  standpoint  of  production,  for  New  England  to 
take  care  of  itself  in  these  respects.  The  same  is  true  of  poultry 
and  eggs.  The  most  serious  difficulty  in  New  England  agricul- 
ture is  connected  with  the  supply  of  market  milk ;  we  can  hardly 
expect  New  England  to  supply  its  own  butter  and  cheese.  New 
England  has  excellent  meadow  lands,  probably  none  better  in 
America.  Corn  does  extremely  well  in  the  valleys,  with  good 
yields  of  both  stalk  and  ear.  There  is  an  abundance  of  natural 
grazing  on  the  hills.  It  would  seem  as  if  New  England  should 
be  an  ideal  dairying  region.  Yet  the  dairy  business  for  twenty 
years  has  been,  to  an  increasing  degree,  precarious.  The  zone 
of  market  milk  supply  for  the  Boston  area,  for  example,  has  been 
pushed  constantly  farther  away  from  the  city,  so  that  the  largest 
proportion  of  the  supply  comes  from  a  distance  of  more  than 
seventy-five  miles.  Some  milk  is  sent  to  Boston  from  eastern 
New  York,  and  before  the  war  a  considerable  quantity  was  im- 
ported from  Canada. 

The  low  price  of  milk  to  producers  has  not  met  the  increasing 
cost  of  such  grain  as  apparently  cannot  be  easily  grown  in 
New  England,  nor  the  high  wages  for  labor,  due  to  the  competi- 
tion of  urban  industries  for  the  labor  supply.  The  highly  cen- 
tralized methods  of  milk  distributors  in  some  places,  and  the 
completely  disorganized  condition  in  others,  as  well  as  the  pop- 
ular idea  that  milk  is  drink  and  not  a  food,  have  also  con- 
tributed to  make  the  situation  extremely  difficult  for  dairymen. 


RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  dairyman  himself  must  have  some  share  in  the  blame  for 
the  situation.  There  has  been  very  little  attempt  among  the 
smaller  dairymen  to  improve  their  herds,  or  in  other  ways  to 
reduce  production  costs  for  a  superior  grade  of  milk.  The  num- 
ber of  dairy  cows  is  decreasing,  dairymen  are  going  out  of  busi- 
ness, and  at  present  there  is  no  apparent  relief  in  sight,  except 
that  under  war  conditions  the  price  of  milk  has  gone  up  rapidly, 
as  it  has  in  other  parts  of  the  country.  But  the  emergency  sit- 
uation is  too  uncertain  to  warrant  predicting  anything  for  the 
future. 

This  brief  survey  of  the  agricultural  situation  perhaps  better 
than  anything  else  indicates  the  probable  future  of  New  Eng- 
land agriculture  after  the  war,  the  one  factor  most  uncertain 
being  the  great  market  milk  industry. 

Some  of  the  hopeful  considerations  may  here  be  mentioned. 
There  is  more  to  New  England  agriculture  than  most  people 
suppose.  If  a  comparison  be  made  between  New  England  agri- 
culture as  a  unit  and  that  of,  say,  an  average  agricultural  state 
of  substantially  similar  area  (about  65,000  square  miles),  I  am 
confident  from  some  study  of  statistics  that  New  England  would 
not  suffer  in  comparison,  if  such  factors  were  considered  as  the 
total  value  of  farm  property,  the  total  value  of  farm  products, 
and  particularly  the  value  of  farm  products  per  acre  of  improved 
land.  In  the  latter  respect,  New  England  probably  holds  the 
record  for  the  country. 

Moreover,  some  of  the  very  best  farming  in  America,  if  not  in 
the  world,  will  be  found  in  New  England.  The  Aroostook  po- 
tato region  has  justly  achieved  world-wide  fame,  not  only  for 
quality  of  product  but  for  average  yield  and  for  intelligent 
methods  of  production.  The  Champlain  Valley  in  Vermont  is 
one  of  the  rich  dairy  regions  of  the  country.  When  former 
Dean  Henry  of  Wisconsin  wanted  a  fruit  farm  for  his  son 
fifteen  years  ago,  out  of  the  fullness  of  his  knowledge  of  agri- 
cultural conditions,  he  selected  a  farm  in  Connecticut,  and  the 
results  have  justified  his  choice.  The  large  specialist  poultry 
farms  of  Rhode  Island  and  Cape  Cod  are  models  of  their  kind. 
The  market  gardening  area  about  Boston  is  one  of  the  most 
intensive  agricultural  regions  in  the  country.  The  tobacco  and 
onion  growers  of  the  Connecticut  Valley  are  highly  skilled;  the 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND  23 

town  of  Hatfield  has  been  called  the  *  *  high-water  mark  of  Amer- 
ican agriculture."  The  average  yield  of  onions  per  acre  in  the 
valley  is  greater  than  in  any  other  part  of  the  country.  The 
net  return  for  shade-grown  tobacco  is  sometimes  as  high  as  $800 
or  $1,000  per  acre. 

Of  course,  there  are  abandoned  farms  in  New  England,  state- 
ments to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  and  there  are  also 
"abandoned  farmers."  But  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  land 
thus  abandoned  never  could  be  farmed  under  modern  condi- 
tions. When  the  farm  home  was  self-sustaining  these  lands  an- 
swered very  well  for  a  combination  of  vegetable-growing,  cattle 
and  sheep  husbandry,  and  lumbering;  but  they  were  never 
adapted  to  a  commercial  agriculture,  and  when  commercial  agri- 
culture appeared  these  lands  had  to  be  given  up  for  profitable 
farming.  Some  of  these  hill  lands  can  well  be  used  for  sheep 
and  goats,  some  for  cattle  grazing,  some  for  •  orcharding,  but 
most  of  them,  let  us  hope,  for  intelligent  forestry.  One  thing 
in  favor  of  New  England  agriculture  is  the  rainfall,  averaging 
approximately  forty-two  inches  per  year,  and  generally  fairly 
well  distributed.  The  markets  are  excellent.  A  good  system  of 
highways  is  rapidly  evolving,  and  the  motor  truck  will  undoubt- 
edly play  a  large  part  in  the  marketing  of  the  future.  Some 
day  the  trolley  companies  will  awaken  to  the  possibilities  of  a 
trolley  freight  service. 

Another  asset  of  New  England  agriculture  is  the  large  num- 
ber of  organized  agencies  working  in  behalf  of  agriculture. 
The  Grange  is  stronger  in  New  England  than  in  any  other  sim- 
ilar area  in  the  country,  with  more  granges  and  more  members. 
Within  this  area,  which  is  about  the  size  of  the  average  state 
outside  of  New  England,  there  are  six  agricultural  colleges,  six 
experiment  stations  and  six  boards  of  agriculture.  At  present 
New  England  is  far  better  organized  than  any  other  similar 
area  in  the  United  States  with  respect  to  farm  bureaus,  prac- 
tically every  county  in  the  whole  region  now  having  a  farm 
bureau  or  similar  organization.  Probably  more  attention  is 
given  to  country  life  matters  in  New  England  than  in  any  other 
part  of  the  United  States,  with  many  kinds  of  effort  and  agencies 
for  the  improvement  of  the  home,  the  school,  the  health  and  play 
life  and  the  moral  and  religious  life  of  the  country  people. 


24  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

As  to  the  specific  question,  what  about  New  England  agricul- 
ture after  the  war?  I  suppose  that  what  I  have  thus  far  said 
answers  the  question  in  the  main.  We  are  not  to  expect  rev- 
olutionary changes  at  once,  although  unquestionably  great 
changes  will  come  as  the  result  of  the  war.  The  interest  of  the 
people  of  the  cities  in  the  quality  and  cheapness  of  their  food 
supply  has  been  aroused  as  never  before.  Alongside  of  this 
new  interest  has  come  the  more  active  participation  of  repre- 
sentative urban  agencies,  such  as  business  organizations  and 
women's  associations.  People  have  learned  their  dependence 
upon  the  farmer. 

The  participation  by  thousands  of  city  and  village  people, 
old  and  young,  in  the  garden  work  has  given  a  new  respect  for 
agriculture,  and  the  toil  and  rights  of  farmers.  People  who 
heretofore  supposed  that  cabbages  came  from  the  grocery  now 
know  that  they  come  from  the  ground.  People  who  had  never 
given  a  thought  to  the  farmer's  difficulties  now  understand  some 
of  the  uncertainties  of  the  weather  as  the  farmer  has  to  face 
them. 

The  whole  problem  of  food  supply  in  all  its  aspects  has  been 
given  a  new  unity.  The  production  of  food,  the  transportation 
and  distribution  of  food,  and  the  wise  use  of  food  have  all  been 
brought  together  into  one  common  problem,  and  the  rights  and 
obligations  of  all  the  different  groups  particularly  interested  in 
this  common  problem  have  also  been  brought  together — pro- 
ducers, distributors  and  consumers.  The  part  which  each  must 
play  is  more  clear.  The  dependence  of  one  group  upon  the  other 
stands  out  prominently.  The  need  of  close  cooperation  among 
them  all  has  been  emphasized.  The  power  and  possibility  of  the 
principles  of  organization,  as  applied  to  the  food  supply  problem, 
have  been  demonstrated  as  never  before.  What  has  been  done 
in  Massachusetts  has  probably  been  done  with  equal  thorough- 
ness in  other  states.  All  over  the  country  the  food  supply  prob- 
lem has  been  brought  to  a  degree  of  organization  that  has  often 
been  dreamed  of  but  never  before  attained.  All  this  has  been 
done  by  cooperation,  not  by  compulsion.  There  has  never  been 
anything  like  it  in  the  history  of  America.  All  this  leads  to  my 
last  point: 

The  state  and  the  nation  are  learning  that  no  man  liveth 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND  25 

unto  himself.     They  are  learning  that  under  a  great  call  old 
animosities  can  be  buried  and  new  relationships  established. 

I  believe  that  all  these  results  will  be  permanent — not  com- 
pletely, but  relatively  so.  I  believe  that  in  every  one  of  the 
results  that  I  have  suggested  we  shall  find — after  the  war  closes 
— a  permanent  addition  to  our  New  England  farm  life  as  well  as 
a  general  gain.  Nobody  can  tell  what  percentage,  so  to  speak, 
of  each  of  these  gains  will  carry  over,  but  I  am  certain  that  it 
will  be  high.  It  means  the  writing  of  an  entirely  new  chapter 
in  New  England  agriculture. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Anderson,  T.  F.     Old  Home  Week  in  New  England.     New  England 

Magazine,  34 :  G73-85,  August  1906. 
Bailey,  Wm.  B.     Urban  and  Rural  New  England.     Amer.   Statistical 

Assn.,  8:345-388,  March,  1903. 

Bid  well,  Percy  Wells.     Rural  Economy  at  the  Beginning  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century.     Transactions  of  the  Connecticut  Academy  of  Arts 

and  Science,  New  Haven,  1916. 
Bolton,  Mrs.  Ethel  Stanwood.     Shirley  Uplands  and  Intervales.     Lit- 

tlefield,  Boston,  1914. 
Boutwell,  George.     The  Decadence  of  New  England,  Forum,  10 : 142- 

151,  October,  1890. 
Butterfield,  Kenyon  L.     The  Relationship  of  New  England  Agriculture 

to  Manufacturing.     The  National  Association  of  Cotton  Manufac- 
tures.    Boston,  Mass.     April,  1916. 
Canee,  Alexander  E.     The  Decline  of  the  Rural  Population  in  New 

England.     American     Statistical     Association,     13:96-101,    May, 

1912. 
Crawford,  Mary  C.     Social  Life  in  Old  New  England.     Little,  Boston, 

1914. 
Drake,  Samuel  A.     A  Book  of  New  England  Legends  and  Folk  Lore. 

Little,  Boston,  1910. 
Dwight,    Timothy.     Travels   in   New   England   and   New   York.     New 

Haven,  1821. 
Earle,   Alice   Morse.     Customs    and    Fashions   in    Old   New   England. 

Scribner's,  New  York,  1894. 
Fiske,  John.     The  Beginnings  of  New  England.     Houghton,  Boston, 

1889. 
French,  George.     New  England :     What  It  Is  and  What  It  Is  To  Be. 

Boston  Chamber  of  Commerce,  1911. 
Hartt,  Roland  L.     A  New  England  Hill  Town.     Atlantic,  83:561-74; 

712-20,  April  and  May,  1899. 
Hartt,  Roland  L.     The  Regeneration  of  Rural  New  England.     Outlook 

64:504-632,  March  3,  1900. 
Howard,  J.  R,     Social  Problems  of  Rural  New  England.     Conference 

Charities  and  Corrections,  416-421,  1911. 


26  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Johnson,  Clifton.     New  England  and  its  Neighbors.     Macmillan,  New 

York,  1902. 

Johnson,  Clifton.     The  New  England  Country.     Lee,  Boston,  1897. 
Matthews,  Mrs.  Lois  Kimball.     The  Expansion  of  New  England,  Hough- 
ton,  Boston,  1909. 

Mayo,  A.  D.     New  England's  Gift  to  the  Republic,  New  England  Mag- 
azine, 1 :  221-8,  October,  18S9. 
MacGill,  C.  E.     The  New  England  Type,  New  England  Magazine,  40 : 

667-75,  August,  1909. 
McSweeney,  Ed.  F.     The  Food  Supply  in  New  England,  the  situation 

we  are  facing  and  what  we  can  and  should  do.     The  New  England 

Federation  for  Rural  Progress,  March,  1917. 
Sanborn,  Alvan  F.     Future  of  Rural  New  England.     Atlantic,  80 :  74- 

83,  July,  1897. 
Sanborn,  Alvan  F.     The  Problems  of  Rural  New  England.     Atlantic, 

79 :  577-598,  May,  1897. 
Stone,  Mason  S.     The  Restoration  of  Country  Life  in  New  England. 

Education,  36 :  630-634.     No.  10,  June,  1916. 
Vallandigham,  E.     What  Ails  New  England?     Putnam's  Monthly,  6: 

719-24,  September,  1909. 
Weeden,   Wm.    B.     Economic   and    Social   History   of   New    England 

1620-1789  (2  volumes),  Houghton,  Boston,  1890. 
Wells,  George  F.     Rural  Life.     The  Status  of  Rural  Vermont.    Vt. 

Agric.  Report,  pp.  61-91,  1903. 
Winslow,  Helen  M.     Child-life  on  a  New  England  Farm,  Education, 

9 :  466-73,  March,  1889. 


CHAPTEE  II 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  COUNTKY  LIFE  IN 
THE  WEST 

THE  MIDDLE  WEST— THE  FIBER  OF  THE  PEOPLE1 

EDWARD   ALSWORTH   ROSS 

A  HUNDRED  years  ago  the  Rev.  Timothy  Dwight  Commented 
complacently  on  the  benefit  to  Connecticut  from  the  draining 
away  to  the  frontier — then  western  New  York — of  the  restless 
spirits  who  chafed  under  the  rule  of  the  old  families  and  the 
Congregational  clergy.  It  never  occurred  to  him  that  these 
insurgent  spirits  were  carrying  with  them  to  the  wilderness  a 
precious  energy  and  initiative. 

The  unprosperous,  the  shiftless,  and  the  migratory  sought  the 
frontier,  to  be  sure ;  but  the  enterprising,  too,  were  attracted  by 
it.  The  timorous  and  the  cautious  stayed  and  accepted  the 
cramping  conditions  of  an  old  society ;  but  those  who  dared  take 
chances,  to  * i  place  a  bet  on  themselves, ' '  were  likely  to  catch  the 
western  fever.  Among  the  sons  and  grandsons  of  such  risk 
takers,  the  venturesome  tempers  cropped  out  much  oftener  than 
among  the  sons  and  grandsons  of  the  stay-at-homes.  Hence, 
the  strange  fact  that  it  was  the  roomy  West  that  settled  the 
farther  West.  On  each  new  frontier  have  swarmed  men  from 
what  was  itself  a  frontier  only  a  generation  earlier. 

By  the  time  some  impression  about  the  West  has  sunk  deep 
into  the  eastern  mind,  the  West  has  swept  onward  and  falsified 
it.  The  Yankee  thinks  of  the  Middle  West  as  a  land  of  priva- 
tion and  hardship ;  it  is,  in  fact,  a  scene  of  comfort  and  plenty. 
He  regards  it  as  peopled  by  a  hodge-podge  of  aliens,  whereas  the 
hodge-podge  is  at  his  own  door.  He  looks  upon  New  England 
as  the  refuge  of  the  primal  American  spirit,  when,  in  sooth,  Iowa 
and  Kansas  are  more  evenly  American  in  tone  than  any  like 

i  Adapted  from  "Changing  America,"  pp.  145-146  and  137-140.  Century 
Co.,  1912. 

27 


28  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

population  in  the  East.  The  Back  Bay  may  think  of  the  Illinois 
farmer  as  raising  more  corn  to  feed  hogs,  which  he  will  sell  in 
order  to  buy  more  land  on  which  to  raise  more  corn  to  feed 
more  hogs  with  which  to  buy  more  land,  and  so  on.  But  the 
grandson  of  the  man  of  whom  this  was  said,  sends  his  daughter 
to  college,  taxes  himself  for  a  public  library,  and  is  patron  of 
the  local  art-loan  exhibit. 

Nor  is  the  Middle  West  without  its  delusions.  It  imagines 
it  is  growing  faster  than  the  East,  because  the  drift  from  the 
crowd  toward  the  edge  of  things,  and  from  the  wearied  land  to 
the  virgin  soils,  has  been  constant  in  American  history.  That 
the  center  of  population,  which  has  traveled  westward  at  the 
average  rate  of  fifty  miles  a  decade,  should  halt  or  even  retreat 
would  be  deemed  a  marvel,  like  the  sun  standing  still  in  the 
vale  of  Ajalon.  Yet  that  very  portent  impends.  The  center, 
which  migrated  fifty-eight  miles  in  the  seventies,  and  forty-eight 
miles  in  the  eighties,  shifted  only  fourteen  miles  in  the  nineties. 
That  it  then  moved  on  thirty-one  miles  was  due  to  the  rush  to 
the  Pacific  slope,  where  one  family  being  at  the  long  arm  of  the 
lever,  balances  half  a  dozen  Slovak  families  shantied  in  Pittsburg. 

The  truth  is  that  the  East  grew  faster  than  the  Middle  West 
through  the  nineties,  and  in  the  last  ten  years  it  has  been 
gaining  nearly  twice  as  rapidly,  having  added  a  quarter  to  its 
people  while  the  West  was  adding  a  seventh.  While  in  the  East 
one  county  out  of  four  lost  in  population,  more  than  two  coun- 
ties out  of  five  in  the  Middle  West  showed  a  decrease.  One 
reason  is  that  the  Western  farmer  resents  cramping  conditions 
more  strongly,  and  responds  sooner  to  the  lure  of  fresh  acres, 
than  the  Eastern  farmer.  The  West  it  is  that  peoples  the  newer 
West,  while  the  enterprising  spirits  of  the  older  commonwealths 
seek  their  chance  in  the  near .  cities.  A  lifetime  ago  the  old 
Yankee  stock  was  faring  overland  to  settle  the  wilderness.  To- 
day only  a  sprinkling  of  the  native  Americans  west  of  the  Great 
Lakes  claim  an  Eastern  state  as  their  birthplace.  If  in  Iowa 
seventy-one  counties  out  of  ninety-nine  have  gone  back  in  popula- 
tion during  the  last  decade,  and  an  equal  number  in  Missouri , 
it  is  assuredly  not  from  bad  times,  but  from  the  call  of  cheap 
land  in  Texas  or  the  Canadian  Northwest. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  THE  WEST  29 

THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  FRONTIER  IN 
AMERICAN  HISTORY  1 

FREDERICK   JACKSON   TURNER 

THE  Atlantic  frontier  was  compounded  of  fisherman,  fur 
trader,  miner,  cattle  raiser,  and  farmer.  Excepting  the  fisher- 
man, each  type  of  industry  was  on  the  march  toward  the  West, 
impelled  by  an  irresistible  attraction.  Each  passed  in  succes- 
sive waves  across  the  continent.  Stand  at  the  Cumberland  Gap 
and  watch  the  procession  of  civilization,  marching  single  file — 
the  buffalo  following  the  trail  to  the  salt  springs,  the  Indian,  the 
fur  trader  and  hunter,  the  cattle-raiser,  the  pioneer  farmer — and 
the  frontier  has  passed  by.  Stand  at  the  South  Pass  in  the 
Rockies  a  century  later  and  see  the  same  procession  with  wider 
intervals  between.  The  unequal  rate  of  advance  compels  us  to 
distinguish  the  frontier  into  the  trader's  frontier,  the  rancher's 
frontier,  or  the  miner's  frontier,  and  the  farmer's  frontier. 
When  the  mines  and  the  cow  pens  were  still  near  the  fall  line, 
the  trader's  pack  trains  were  tinkling  across  the  Alleghanies, 
and  the  French  on  the  Great  Lakes  were  fortifying  their  posts, 
alarmed  by  the  British  trader's  birch  canoe.  When  the  trappers 
scaled  the  Rockies  the  farmer  was  still  near  the  mouth  of  the 
Missouri. 

And  yet,  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  the  interests  of  the 
trader  and  the  farmer,  the  Indian  trade  pioneered  the  way  for 
civilization.  The  buffalo  trail  became  the  Indian  trail,  and 
this  became  the  trader's  " trace";  the  trails  widened  into  roads, 
and  the  roads  into  turnpikes,  and  these  in  turn  were  transformed 
into  railroads.  The  same  origin  can  be  shown  for  the  railroads 
of  the  South,  the  Far  West,  and  the  Dominion  of  Canada.  The 
trading  posts  reached  by  these  trails  were  on  the  sites  of  Indian 
villages  which  had  been  placed  in  positions  suggested  by  nature ; 
and  these  trading  posts,  situated  so  as  to  command  the  water 
systems  of  the  country,  have  grown  into  such  cities  as  Albany, 
Pittsburg,  Detroit,  Chicago,  St.  Louis,  Council  Bluffs,  and  Kan- 
sas City. 

i  Adapted  from  American  Historical  Association  Report,  pp.  199-227, 
Boston,  1893. 


30  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Generally,  in  all  the  Western  settlements,  three  classes,  like 
the  waves  of  the  ocean,  have  rolled  one  after  the  other.  First 
comes  the  pioneer,  who  depends  for  the  subsistence  of  his  fam- 
ily chiefly  upon  the  natural  growth  of  vegetation  called  the 
1  'range,"  and  the  proceeds  of  hunting.  His  implements  of 
agriculture  are  rude,  chiefly  of  his  own  make,  and  his  efforts 
directed  mainly  to  a  crop  of  corn  and  a  ''truck  patch."  The 
last  is  a  rude  garden  for  growing  cabbages,  beans,  corn  for 
roasting  ears,  cucumbers  and  potatoes.  A  log  cabin,  and,  oc- 
casionally, a  stable  and  a  corn  crib,  and  a  field  of  a  dozen 
acres,  the  timber  girdled  or  "deadened,"  and  fenced,  are 
enough  for  his  occupancy.  It  is  quite  immaterial  whether  he 
ever  becomes  the  owner  of  the  soil.  He  is  the  occupant  for  the 
time  being,  pays  no  rent,  and  feels  as  independent  as  the  "lord 
of  the  manor."  With  a  horse  and  a  cow,  and  one  or  two 
breeders  of  swine,  he  strikes  into  the  woods  with  his  family, 
and  becomes  the  founder  of  a  new  countrjr,  or  perhaps  a  state. 
He  builds  his  cabin,  gathers  round  him  a  few  other  families  of 
similar  tastes  and  habits,  and  occupies  until  the  range  is  some- 
what subdued,  and  hunting  a  little  precarious,  or,  which  is  more 
frequently  the  case,  till  the  neighbors  crowd  around,  roads, 
bridges  and  fields  annoy  him,  and  he  lacks  elbow  room.  The 
preemption  law  enables  him  to  dispose  of  his  cabin  and  corn 
fields  to  the  next  class  of  emigrants;  and,  to  employ  his  own 
figure,  he  "breaks  for  high  timber,"  "clears  out  for  the  New 
Purchase"  or  migrates  to  Arkansas  or  Texas,  to  work  the  same 
process  over. 

The  next  class  of  emigrants  purchase  the  lands,  add  field  to 
field,  clear  out  the  roads,  throw  rough  bridges  over  the  streams, 
put  up  hewn  log  houses  with  glass  windows  and  brick  or  stone 
chimneys,  occasionally  plant  orchards,  build  mills,  school  houses, 
court-houses,  and  exhibit  the  picture  and  forms  of  plain  frugal, 
civilized  life. 

Another  wave  rolls  on.  The  men  of  capital  and  enterprise 
come.  The  settler  is  ready  to  sell  out  and  take  advantage  of 
the  rise  in  property,  push  farther  into  the  interior,  and  become 
himself  a  man  of  capital  and  enterprise  in  turn.  The  small 
.village  rises  to  a  spacious  town  or  city;  substantial  edifices  of 
brick,  extensive  fields,  orchards,  and  gardens,  colleges  and 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  THE  WEST  31 

churches  are  seen.  Broadcloth,  silks,  leghorns,  crapes,  and  all 
the  refinements,  luxuries,  elegancies,  frivolities,  and  fashions  are 
in  vogue.  Thus  wave  after  wave  is  rolling  westward;  the  real 
El  Dorado  is  still  farther  on. 

A  portion  of  the  two  first  classes  remain  stationary  amidst 
the  general  movement,  improve  their  habits  and  condition,  and 
rise  in  the  scale  of  society.  The  writer  has  traveled  much 
amongst  the  first  class,  the  real  pioneers.  He  has  lived  for 
many  years  in  connection  with  the  second  grade ;  and  now  the 
third  wave  is  sweeping  over  large  districts  of  Indiana,  Illinois, 
and  Missouri.  Migration  has  become  almost  a  habit  in  the 
West.  Hundreds  of  men  can  be  found,  not  over  fifty  years 
of  age,  who  have  settled  for  the  fourth,  fifth,  or  sixth  time  on 
a  new  spot.  To  sell  out  and  remove  only  a  few  hundred  miles 
makes  up  a  portion  of  the  variety  of  backwoods  life  and  manners. 

First,  we  note  that  the  frontier  promoted  the  formation  of  a 
composite  nationality  for  the  American  people.  The  coast  was 
preponderantly  English,  but  the  later  tides  of  continental  im- 
migration flowed  across  to  the  free  lands.  This  was  the  case 
from  the  early  colonial  days.  The  Scotch-Irish  and  the  Pala- 
tine Germans,  or  "Pennsylvania  Dutch,"  furnished  the  domi- 
nant element  in  the  stock  of  the  colonial  frontier.  With  these 
people  were  also  the  freed  indentured  servants,  or  redemp- 
tioners,  who,  at  the  expiration  of  their  term  of  service,  passed 
to  the  frontier.  Very  generally  these  redemptioners  were  of 
non-English  stock.  In  the  crucible  of  the  frontier  the  immi- 
grants were  Americanized,  liberated,  and  fused  into  a  mixed 
race,  English  in  neither  nationality  nor  characteristics.  The 
process  has  gone  on  from  the  early  days  to  our  own.  The  ad- 
vance of  the  frontier  decreased  our  dependence  on  England. 
The  coast,  particularly  of  the  South,  lacked  diversified  indus- 
tries, and  was  dependent  on  England  for  the  bulk  of  its  sup- 
plies. In  the  South  there  was  even  a  dependence  upon  the 
Northern  colonies  for  articles  of  food.  Before  long  the  fron- 
tier created  a  demand  for  merchants.  As  it  retreated  from  the 
coast  it  became  less  and  less  possible  for  England  to  bring  her 
supplies  directly  to  the  consumers'  wharfs,  and  carry  away 
staple  crops,  and  staple  crops  began  to  give  way  to  diversified 
agriculture  for  a  time. 


32  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  legislation  which  most  developed  the  powers  of  the  na- 
tional government,  and  played  the  largest  part  in  its  activity, 
was  conditioned  on  the  frontier.  The  growth  of  nationalism 
and  the  evolution  of  American  political  institutions  were  de- 
pendent on  the  advance  of  the  frontier.  The  pioneer  needed 
the  goods  of  the  coast,  and  so  the  grand  series  of  internal  im- 
provement and  railroad  legislation  began,  with  potent  nationaliz- 
ing effects.  Over  internal  improvements  occurred  great  de- 
bates, in  which  grave  constitutional  questions  were  discussed. 
Sectional  groupings  appear  in  the  votes,  profoundly  significant 
for  the  historian.  Loose  construction  increased  as  the  nation 
marched  westward.  But  the  West  was  not  content  with  bring- 
ing the  farm  to  the  factory.  Under  the  lead  of  Clay — ' '  Harry 
of  the  West," — protective  tariffs  were  passed,  with  the  cry  of 
bringing  the  factory  to  the  farm.  The  disposition  of  the  public 
lands  was  a  third  important  subject  of  national  legislation  in- 
fluenced by  the  frontier.  "No  subject,"  said  Henry  Clay, 
"which  has  presented  itself  to  the  present,  or  perhaps  any  pre- 
ceding, Congress,  is  of  greater  magnitude  than  that  of  the  pub- 
lic lands."  When  we  consider  the  far-reaching  effects  of  the 
government's  land  policy  upon  political,  economic,  and  social 
aspects  of  American  life,  we  are  disposed  to  agree  with  him. 
But  this  legislation  was  framed  under  frontier  influences,  and 
under  the  lead  of  western  statesmen  like  Benton  and  Jackson. 
Said  Senator  Scott,  of  Indiana,  in  1841 :  ' '  I  consider  the  pre- 
emption law  merely  declaratory  of  the  custom  of  common  law  of 
the  settlers." 

But  it  was  not  merely  in  legislative  action  that  the  frontier 
worked  against  the  sectionalism  of  the  coast.  The  economic  and 
social  characteristics  of  the  frontier  worked  against  sectionalism. 
The  men  of  the  frontier  had  closer  resemblances  to  the  middle 
region  than  to  either  of  the  other  sections.  Pennsylvania  had 
been  the  seed  plot  of  frontier  emigration,  and,  although  she 
passed  on  her  settlers  along  the  Great  Valley  into  the  west  of 
Virginia  and  the  Carolinas,  yet  the  industrial  society  of  these 
southern  frontiersmen  was  always  more  like  that  of  the  Middle 
region  than  like  that  of  the  tidewater  portions  of  the  South, 
which  later  came  to  spread  the  industrial  type  throughout  the 
South. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  THE  WEST  33 

But  the  most  important  effect  of  the  frontier  has  been  in 
the  promotion  of  democracy  here  and  in  Europe.  As  has  been 
indicated,  the  frontier  is  productive  of  individualism.  Com- 
plex society  is  precipitated  by  the  wilderness  into  a  kind  of 
primitive  organization  based  on  the  family.  The  tendency  is 
anti-social.  It  produces  antipathy  to  control,  and  particularly 
to  any  direct  control.  The  taxgatherer  is  viewed  as  the  rep- 
resentative of  oppression.  Professor  Osgood,  in  an  able  article, 
has  pointed  out  that  the  frontier  conditions  prevalent  in  the 
colonies  are  important  factors  in  the  explanation  of  the  Ameri- 
can Revolution,  where  individual  liberty  was  somewhat  confused 
with  the  absence  of  all  effective  government.  The  same  con- 
ditions aid  in  explaining  the  difficulty  of  instituting  a  strong 
government  in  the  period  of  the  Confederacy.  The  frontier  in- 
dividualism has  from  the  beginning  promoted  democracy. 

So  long  as  free  land  exists,  the  opportunity  for  a  competency 
exists,  and  economic  power  secures  political  power.  But  the 
democracy  born  of  free  land,  strong  in  selfishness  and  individual- 
ism, intolerant  of  administrative  experience  and  education,  and 
pressing  individual  liberty  beyond  its  proper  bounds,  has  its 
dangers  as  well  as  its  benefits.  Individualism  in  America  has 
allowed  a  laxity  in  regard  to  governmental  affairs  which  has 
rendered  possible  the  spoils  system  and  all  the  manifest  evils 
that  follow  from  the  lack  of  a  highly  developed  civic  spirit. 

The  most  effective  efforts  of  the  East  to  regulate  the  frontier 
came  through  its  educational  and  religious  activity,  exerted  by 
interstate  migration  and  by  organized  societies.  The  New  Eng- 
land preacher  and  the  school-teacher  left  their  marks  on  the 
West.  The  dread  of  western  emancipation  from  New  England's 
political  and  economic  control  was  paralleled  by  her  fears  lest 
the  West  cut  loose  from  her  religion.  Commenting,  in  1850,  on 
reports  that  settlement  was  rapidly  extending  northward  in 
Wisconsin,  the  editor  of  the  Home  Missionary  writes:  "We 
scarcely  know  whether  to  rejoice  or  mourn  over  this  extension 
of  our  settlements.  While  we  sympathize  in  whatever  tends  to 
increase  the  physical  resources  and  prosperity  of  our  country, 
we  cannot  forget  that  with  all  these  dispersions  into  remote  and 
still  remoter  corners  of  the  land  the  supply  of  the  means  of 
grace  is  becoming  relatively  less  and  less."  Acting  in  accord- 


34  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

ance  with  such  ideas,  home  missions  were  established  and  west- 
ern colleges  were  erected.  Thus  an  intellectual  stream  from  New 
England  sources  fertilized  the  West.  Other  sections  sent  their 
missionaries ;  but  the  real  struggle  was  between  sects.  The  con- 
test for  power  and  the  expansive  tendency  furnished  to  the  va- 
rious sects  by  the  existence  of  a  moving  frontier  must  have  had 
important  results  on  the  character  of  religious  organizations  in 
the  United  States.  The  multiplication  of  rival  churches  in  the 
little  frontier  towns  had  deep  and  lasting  social  effects.  The 
effects  of  western  freedom  and  newness  in  producing  religious 
isms  is  noteworthy.  Illustrations  of  this  tendency  may  be  seen 
in  the  development  of  the  Millerites,  Spiritualists,  and  Mormons 
of  western  New  York  in  its  frontier  days. 

To  the  frontier  the  American  intellect  owes  its  striking  char- 
acteristics. That  coarseness  and  strength  combined  with  acute- 
ness  and  inquisitiveness ;  that  practical,  inventive  turn  of  mind, 
quick  to  find  expedients ;  that  masterful  grasp  of  material  things, 
lacking  in  the  artistic,  but  powerful  to  effect  great  ends;  that 
restless,  nervous  energy;  that  dominant  individualism,  working 
for  good  and  for  evil;  and,  withal,  that  buoyancy  and  exuber- 
ance which  comes  with  freedom, — these  are  traits  of  the  fron- 
tier, or  traits  called  out  elsewhere  because  of  the  existence  of 
the  frontier.  We  are  not  easily  aware  of  the  deep  influence 
of  this  individualistic  way  of  thinking  upon  our  present  condi- 
tions. It  persists  in  the  midst  of  a  society  that  has  passed  away 
from  the  conditions  that  occasioned  it.  It  makes  it  difficult  to 
secure  social  regulation  of  business  enterprises  that  are  essen- 
tially public,  it  is  a  stumbling-block  in  the  way  of  civil-service 
reform;  it  permeates  our  doctrines  of  education;  but  with  the 
passing  of  the  free  lands  a  vast  extension  of  the  social  tendency 
may  be  expected  in  America. 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  PIONEER1 

RAY   STANNARD   BAKER 

THE  peopling  of  the  country  makes  one  of  the  most  interesting 
and  significant  stories  in  the  history  of  the  nation.  For  many 

i  Adapted  from  "The  Great  Southwest,"  Century,  64:9,  May,  1902. 
(Copyright  by  Century  Company,  1902.) 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  THE  WEST  35 

years  it  was  the  unknown  land,  the  land  of  possibilities  and 
wonders,  as  well  as  of  danger  and  death.  Therefore  it  has  at- 
tracted the  hardy  pioneer,  and  here,  for  lack  of  any  other  fron- 
tier on  the  continent,  the  pioneer,  though  with  the  germ  of 
westward  ho!  still  lingering  in  his  blood,  has  been  compelled 
at  last  to  settle  down.  I  shall  not  soon  forget  the  sorrowful 
desert-dweller  whom  I  met  in  what  seemed  the  ends  of  the  earth 
in  Arizona.  His  nearest  neighbor  was  fifteen  miles  away,  his 
post-office  twenty-five  miles,  and  yet  he  was  bemoaning  the  fact 
that  the  country  was  becoming  crowded.  "If  there  were  any 
more  frontier,"  he  said,  ' 'I'd  go  to" it." 

It  is  hardy  blood,  that  of  the  pioneer,  good  stock  on  which  to 
found  the  development  of  a  country.  For  years  the  West  has 
been  the  lodestone  for  those  adventurous  spirits  who  love  the 
outdoor  and  exciting  life  of  the  mining  prospector,  the  cow-boy, 
the  hunter — a  healthy,  rugged  lot,  virtually  all  pure  Americans. 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  FRONTIER1 

JAMES   BRYCE 

So  America,  in  her  swift  onward  progress,  sees,  looming  on  the 
horizon  and  now  no  longer  distant,  a  time  of  mists  and  shadows, 
wherein  dangers  may  lie  concealed  whose  form  and  magnitude 
she  can  scarcely  yet  conjecture.  As  she  fills  up  her  western  re- 
gions with  inhabitants,  she  sees  the  time  approach  when  all  the 
best  land,  even  that  which  the  extension  of  irrigation  has  made 
available,  will  have  been  occupied,  and  when  the  land  now  un- 
der cultivation  will  have  been  so  far  exhausted  as  to  yield  scan- 
tier crops  even  to  more  expensive  culture.  Although  transpor- 
tation may  also  have  then  become  cheaper,  the  price  of1  food  will 
rise ;  farms  will  be  less  easily  obtained  and  will  need  more  capi- 
tal to  work  them  with  profit ;  the  struggle  for  existence  will  be- 
come more  severe.  And  while  the  outlet  which  the  West  now 
provides  for  the  overflow  of  the  great  cities  will  have  become  less 
available,  the  cities  will  have  grown  immensely  more  populous; 

i  Adapted  from  "The  American  Commonwealth,  II,"  New  Edition,  (1916), 
p.  913.  Macmillan,  N.  Y. 


36  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

pauperism,  now  confined  to  some  six  or  seven  of  the  greatest,  may 
be  more  widely  spread ;  and  even  if  wages  do  not  sink  work  may 
be  less  abundant.  In  fact  the  chronic  evils  and  problems  of  old 
societies  and  crowded  countries,  such  as  we  see  them  to-day  in 
Europe,  will  have  reappeared  on  this  new  soil. 


THE  GREAT  SOUTHWEST1 

RAY   STANNARD   BAKER 

ONE  of  the  first  teachings  of  the  arid  land  is  that  the  individual 
must  subserve  his  interest  to  that  of  the  community,  and  that 
is  a  hard  matter  for  many  an  American  to  do.  In  the  East  a 
farmer  may  settle  on  his  quarter-section,  build  a  home,  raise 
what  he  pleases  or  let  the  weeds  grow,  keep  up  his  fences  or 
let  them  fall  down,  and  no  one  says  a  word  in  objection;  he  is 
the  most  independent  of  men.  But  in  the  desert,  where  the 
struggle  for  existence  is  more  intense,  men  must  march  in  lock- 
step:  if  one  wastes  water,  allows  water  to  run  out  on  another's 
field,  does  not  keep  up  his  ditches,  does  not  cooperate  with  his 
neighbors  in  the  work  of  cleaning  or  repairing  ditches,  he  injures 
the  entire  community,  and  the  community  must  force  him 
sternly  into  the  line  of  duty.  Moreover,  he  must  join  with  his 
neighbors  in  the  protection  of  the  water-supply,  in  case  some 
other  community  seeks  to  divert  more  than  its  share  from  the 
river  above;  and  in  many  cases  of  drought  and  low  water  he 
must  suffer  equally  with  his  neighbors,  sharing  what  little  water 
there  is  to  be  had,  even  though  his  own  orchards  are  dying.  All 
this  serves  to  build  up  such  a  community  spirit  in  the  irrigated 
countries  as  the  Easterner  cannot  appreciate.  There  are  human 
bickerings  here  as  everywhere  else,  but  a  man  soon  learns  that  the 
community  interest  is,  after  all,  greater  than  that  of  the  in- 
dividual, and  upon  every  important  subject  he  submits  his  will 
to  that  of  the  community.  From  this  spirit  have  arisen  those 
peculiar  and  powerful  cooperative  associations  of  farmers,  which 
all  but  control  the  marketing  of  crops  in  parts  of  the  West. 
Instead  of  trusting  to  avaricious  commission  men  and  engaging 

i  Adapted  from  Century,  64:  369-371,  July,  1902. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  THE  WEST  37 

in  disastrous  competition,  the  orange-growers,  the  raisin-growers, 
the  bee-keepers,  and  other  classes  of  farmers,  have  formed 
unions  and  associations  which  control  the  whole  matter  of  pack- 
ing, shipping,  and  selling  the  farmers'  products.  These  as- 
sociations further  curtail  the  rights  of  the  individual,  hindering 
him,  for  instance,  from  shipping  poor  fruit,  or  poorly  packed 
fruit,  lest  it  injure  the  reputation  of  the  community  in  the 
Eastern  markets;  and  if  there  are  k>sses,  each  man  must  stand 
his  share.  So  powerful,  indeed,  are  these  associations  that  they 
can  even  venture  to  fight  the  railroad  companies  in  the  matter  of 
freight  rates,  as  they  have  done  more  than  once  in  California. 
Farming  in  the  East  is  a  sort  of  guerilla  warfare,  every  man  for 
himself;  in  the  arid  West,  it  is  a  highly  organized  and  disci- 
plined struggle. 

It  is  interesting  to  speculate  as  to  the  effect  which  these  new 
conditions  of  life  will  have  on  the  American  character.  Irri- 
gation requires  a  greater  degree  of  skill  than  ordinary  agricul- 
ture; it  is  more  a  matter  of  exact  science,  less  of  chance.  The 
Easterner  sows  his  crops  and  depends  on  the  will  of  Heaven  for 
his  rain ;  the  Westerner  goes  out  to  his  head-gate  and  lets  in  the 
rain,  in  just  such  amounts  and  at  just  such  times  as  he  pleases. 
He  knows  how  much  water  he  is  entitled  to,  and  its  distribution 
is  a  simple  matter  of  calculation.  But  he  must  be  a  careful 
student  of  his  crops;  he  cannot  water  his  strawberries  and  his 
sugar-beets  at  the  same  time  and  in  the  same  amount,  for  the 
strawberries  are  always  thirsty,  while  the  beets  require  only  a 
few  waterings  in  the  season.  He  must  also  know  his  own  peculiar 
climate,  for  fields  require  much  more  water  in  the  desert  air  of 
Arizona  than  in  the  moister  climate  of  southern  California,  and 
he  must  have  a  care  that  the  water  leaves  no  alkali  in  his  soil. 
In  other  words,  he  must  be  an  intelligent,  reading,  scientific 
farmer  if  he  would  outwit  the  desert  and  compete  with  the 
energy  of  his  neighbors.  Men  in  the  irrigated  lands  live  closer 
together  than  in  the  East,  and  farms  are  smaller.  Some  valleys, 
indeed,  seem  like  villages,  each  resident  of  which  lives  in  the 
midst  of  handsome  grounds;  whole  districts  in  southern  Cali- 
fornia are  veritable  parks  for  beauty.  This  brings  neighbors 
closer  together,  breaks  up  the  deadly  isolation  of  the  Middle 
States  farmers,  enables  a  community  to  have  better  schools, 


38  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

churches,  and  places  of  amusement,  tempts  the  mercurial  young 
man  to  stay  on  the  farm. 


LIFE  IN  THE  CORN  BELT  1 

T.    N.    CARVER 

THE  average  Western  farmer  is  as  well  informed  upon  the 
questions  of  the  day  as  the  average  business  or  professional  man 
of  our  Eastern  cities,  though  he  lacks  acquaintance  with  many 
things  which  some  regard  as  essential  to  culture.  He  takes  a 
deep  interest  in  politics,  and  he  is  better  informed  about  what 
goes  on  in  our  legislative  halls  than  any  other  class. 

The  corn  belt  is  probably  the  most  prosperous  agricultural 
region  of  any  considerable  size  in  the  world,  but  success  requires 
great  industry  and  a  degree  of  knowledge  that  comes  only  from 
experience.  In  the  East,  especially  in  New  England,  where 
farming  is  not  prosperous  and  the  cities  furnish  better  oppor- 
tunities for  men  of  capacity,  it  happens  that  the  best  men  are 
drawn  from  the  country  to  the  city,  leaving,  as  a  rule,  only  the 
less  competent  to  people  the  country  districts.  That  is  why 
there  has  been  so  much  discussion  during  the  last  year  or  two 
over  the  degeneracy  of  the  farming  regions.  But  in  the  corn 
belt  the  conditions  are  quite  reversed ;  the  best  opportunties  are 
furnished  by  the  farms,  and  one  of  the  most  striking  facts  that 
one  observes  on  a  tour  of  this  kind  is  the  manifest  superiority  of 
the  average  farmer,  physically,  intellectually,  and  morally,  to 
the  average  dweller  in  the  towns  of  that  region.  With  the 
exception  of  the  retired  farmers,  who  make  up  a  fair  proportion 
of  the  population  of  the  country  towns  and  small  cities  of  the 
West,  the  bulk  of  the  population  seems  to  be  made  up  of  people 
who  are  not  fit  to  make  good  farmers. 

Even  some  of  the  so-called  retired  farmers  have  retired,  not 
because  they  have  accumulated  a  competence,  but  because  they 
were  unable  to  make  farming  pay  or  because  they  have  found 
work  too  hard.  They  have  moved  to  town,  where  their  wives 
keep  boarders  while  they  loaf  around  the  stores.  For  this 

i  Adapted  from  World's  Work,  7:  4232-9,  Dec.,  1903. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  THE  WEST  39 

reason  there  is  a  sharp  distinction  made  between  " tired"  and 
" retired"  farmers.  The  hotels  and  livery  stables  also  are 
generally  kept  by  this  class  of  tired  farmers. 

It  seems  that  every  line  of  business  carried  on  in  the  towns 
and  small  cities  in  the  corn  belt  is  largely  in  the  hands  of  in- 
ferior men,  though  of  course  there  are  numerous  brilliant  ex- 
ceptions. Almost  every  town  or  city  will  have  one  or  two  news- 
papers, which  claim  to  be  the  organs  of  the  leading  political 
parties,  but  which  really  seem  to  be  published  for  the  purpose 
of  apologizing  for  their  own  existence.  The  manual  labor  which 
is  done  about  such  towns  is  almost  invariably  done  by  men  who 
are  not  fit  for  farm  hands.  Some  are  so  profane  and  obscene  in 
their  language  that  a  decent  farmer  would  not  have  them  around, 
but  they  will  work  as  section  hands  on  the  railroad  for  less 
wages  than  farm  hands  get,  and  loaf  about  the  depot  and  the 
streets  at  night,  play  Sunday  baseball,  and  have  other  similar 
enjoyments  not  open  to  the  farm  hand.  Even  a  good  deal  of 
the  mercantile  business  is  carried  on  by  men  who  do  not  show 
a  degree  of  intelligence  at  all  comparable  to  that  of  the  average 
farmer. 

One  hears  a  great  deal  of  shockingly  bad  grammar  in  the  corn 
country,  but  correct  speech  is  really  a  matter  of  conventionality, 
and  a  farmer's  success  does  not  depend  upon  his  observance  of 
conventionalities.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  certain  things 
which  he  must  know,  and  which  no  amount  of  suavity  or  grace 
or  good  form  will  enable  him  to  dispense  with.  He  is  dealing 
with  nature  rather  than  with  men,  and  nature  can  not  be  de- 
luded by  a  pleasant  front  nor  a  smooth  tongue.  One  must  not 
be  hasty  in  forming  conclusions  as  to  the  farmer's  intelligence 
on  the  basis  of  his  clothes,  his  knowledge  of  the  forms  of  polite 
society,  nor  even  his  use  of  grammar. 

Though  the  average  family  is  somewhat  larger  than  that  of 
the  well-to-do  urbanite,  there  is  a  manifest  decline  even  in  the 
country  districts.  Families  of  four  or  five  children  among  the 
native  Americans  are  quite  common,  but  one  almost  never  finds 
such  patriarchal  families  of  ten  and  twelve  children  as  were 
common  in  the  days  of  our  grandfathers.  The  most  conspicuous 
case  of  this  kind  that  I  saw  was  a  family  of  eight  children  be- 
longing to  an  Iowa  farmer.  The  mother,  who  is  still  slightly  on 


40  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  sunny  side  of  forty,  was  a  daughter  of  a  well-to-do  farmer 
and  had  excellent  ' '  schooling ' '  for  the  time  and  place.  She  was 
a  country  schoolma'am  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  and  also  gave 
music  lessons  to  a  few  children  in  the  community.  She  spent  one 
year  at  a  small  Western  college,  but  was  married  at  the  age  of 
twenty-two  to  a  young  farmer  who  was  living  on  a  rented  farm 
and  whose  only  capital  consisted  of  a  team  and  farming  im- 
plements. She  has  raised  or  is  raising  her  eight  children ;  they 
have  bought  a  farm  of  160  acres,  which  is  now  paid  for;  they 
have  a  comfortable  house;  and  they  are  just  beginning  to  feel 
in  easy  circumstances.  The  long,  hard  struggle  through  which 
they  have  gone  has  in  no  way  embittered  their  dispositions. 
They  are  active  in  church  work;  the  mother  teaches  a  class  in 
Sunday-school ;  and  the  eldest  daughter,  seventeen  years  of  age, 
is  the  organist.  The  children  were  unusually  bright  and  healthy, 
and  the  mother  insists  that  some  way  must  be  found  to  send  them 
all  through  college,  and  I  have  little  doubt  that  they  will  succeed. 
The  husband  is  a  hard  working  man  of  kindly  disposition,  but 
considerably  her  inferior  in  mental  and  social  endowments,  of 
which  fact,  however,  both  seemed  utterly  oblivious. 

One  form  of  social  diversion  common  throughout  the  corn  belt 
is  what  is  known  as  the  "basket-meeting."  A  basket-meeting 
is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  regular  church  service  turned 
into  a  picnic.  Some  grove  near  the  country  church  is  selected, 
and  on  Saturday  afternoon  the  men  gather  and  erect  an  outdoor 
pulpit,  with  a  sufficient  number  of  benches  for  the  congregation, 
and  on  the  following  Sunday,  at  the  regular  hour,  the  church 
service  is  held  here  instead  of  in  the  church.  After  the  service 
the  members  of  the  congregation,  having  come  supplied  with 
baskets  of  provisions,  spread  them  upon  the  benches  and  partake 
of  a  bountiful  dinner. 

But  such  a  minor  festivity  pales  into  insignificance  in  com- 
parison with  such  annual  events  as  the  Fourth  of  July,  Old 
Settlers'  Day,  and  the  County  Fair,  though  the  latter  has  sadly 
degenerated  since  it  fell  into  the  hands  of  city  sports,  who  make 
it  simply  an  occasion  for  horse-racing,  accompanied  by  all  the 
devices  for  separating  a  fool  from  his  money  which  usually  sur- 
round a  circus. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  THE  WEST  41 

The  farmer  in  the  corn  belt  has  his  labor  problem,  too,  though 
I  have  never  heard  any  one  predicting  the  doom  of  the  corn  belt 
on  that  ground.  The  fact  is  that  while  the  existence  of  the  labor 
problem  is  recognized,  it  is  of  such  minor  significance  as  to  be 
almost  negligible.  Fortunately  for  Western  agriculture  and 
American  society  in  general,  there  is  no  proletariat  of  agricul- 
tural laborers.  There  are  practically  no  farm  laborers  of  the 
European  type — that  is,  men  who  expect  always  to  work  for 
wages  as  farm  hands.  The  typical  farm  hand  is  a  young  un- 
married man,  usually  the  son  of  a  farmer  living  in  the  neighbor- 
hood— though  frequently  a  foreign  immigrant — who  "works 
out ' '  for  a  few  years  merely  to  get  money  enough  to  begin  farm- 
ing on  his  own  responsibility  on  a  rented  farm. 

The  scarcity  of  farm  labor,  however,  in  no  way  interferes  with 
the  success  of  corn-growing.  In  the  first  place,  the  corn-grower 
works  with  his  own  hands,  and  so  do  the  other  members  of  his 
family.  Riding  plows  and  cultivators,  disk  harrows  and  corn 
harvesters,  as  well  as  twine  binders  and  hay  stackers,  so  reduce 
the  amount  of  muscular  strength  needed  that  a  boy  of  ten  years 
of  age  will  frequently  render  almost  as  much  service  as  a  grown 
man. 

Another  factor  which  contributes  to  the  solution  of  the  labor 
problem  is  the  distribution  of  the  work  of  the  farm  over  the 
year.  On  a  typical  corn  farm  there  .is  no  season  which  is  pre- 
eminently the  'busy  season,  unless  the  corn-plowing  has  fallen  be- 
hind because  of  wet  weather.  Though  farmers  with  whom  I 
talked  universally  agreed  that  corn  was  by  far  their  most  profit- 
able crop,  there  were  very  few  farms  where  corn  was  grown 
exclusively.  With  a  given  labor  force,  only  a  certain  amount  of 
corn  can  be  cultivated,  anyway,  and  it  requires  no  more  labor 
force  to  grow  a  certain  amount  of  other  crops  in  addition. 
Wheat  and  oats  are  sown  before  corn-planting  time,  and  are 
harvested  after  the  corn  has  been  "laid  by" — that  is,  after  the 
plowing  is  finished.  The  hay  harvest  also  comes  in  this  interval, 
and  the  threshing  is  usually  done  before  the  corn-husking  be- 
gins. Moreover,  the  stubble  fields  can  usually  be  plowed  in  the 
interval  between  the  harvesting  of  the  small  grain  (wheat  and 
oats)  and  the  husking  of  the  corn.  Thus  the  farmer  in  the  corn 


42  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

belt  has  practically  eliminated  the  labor  problem,  so  that  even 
the  limited  supply  of  farm  hands  is  no  serious  handicap  upon 
the  corn-growing  industry. 

As  to  the  problem  of  domestic  service,  there  is  practically  none. 
Hired  girls  are  almost  non-existent.  Every  farmer's  wife  ex- 
pects to  do  her  own  work,  and  if  in  time  of  sickness  or  of  special 
stress  of  work  she  can  induce  some  girl  from  the  neighborhood 
to  come  in  and  help  her,  she  considers  herself  fortunate. 

Like  other  parts  of  the  West,  the  corn  belt  was  settled  by 
people  from  a  great  variety  of  sources,  and  has  not  been  without 
its  share  of  tough  communities;  but  the  land  was  too  valuable, 
and  there  was  too  high  a  premiun  on  thrift  and  industry  for 
such  communities  long  to  remain. 

Everywhere  in  the  corn  belt,  and  indeed  wherever  farming 
is  prosperous,  one  meets  with  the  interesting  phenomenon  of  the 
retired  farmer.  In  general,  he  is  a  man  considerably  past  mid- 
dle age,  who  has  by  hard  work  and  careful  management  become 
the  owner  of  a  fair-sized  farm,  with  perhaps  a  moderate  bank 
account  besides,  and  who  has  either  sold  or  rented  his  farm  and 
moved  to  town  to  spend  his  declining  years  in  rest.  From  the 
number  of  such  cases  one  might  almost  conclude  that  the  average 
farmer's  idea  of  paradise  was  a  country  town  where  he  could 
live  comfortably,  supplying  his  daily  needs  without  denying 
himself  rest  or  sleep,  and  where  he  would  be  free  from  the  wear 
and  tear  of  continually  guessing  at  the  weather,  caring  for  his 
live-stock,  battling  with  weeds  and  the  thousand-and-one  other 
relentless  enemies  of  the  farmer.  But  when  he  reaches  this 
paradise,  unless  he  has  retired  on  account  of  old  age,  he  is  almost 
invariably  disappointed,  if  not  demoralized.  The  life  soon  grows 
monotonous.  Having  always  been  accustomed  to  an  active  out- 
door life,  he  becomes  restive  and  discontented.  Sometimes  he 
takes  up  some  other  line  of  business — goes  into  a  store,  starts  a 
hotel  or  a  livery  stable,  or  goes  into  the  real  estate  business ;  and. 
again  he  sometimes  degenerates  into  an  ordinary  town  loafer. 
He  frequently  makes  a  poor  urbanite,  for  his  ideas  of  living  were 
developed  under  rural  conditions.  He  is  somewhat  slow  to  ap- 
preciate the  value  of  good  sewage,  generally  opposes  levying 
taxes  for  street  improvements,  and  is  almost  invariably  disliked 
by  the  merchants  because  of  his  parsimonious  way  of  buying 


COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  THE  WEST  43 

goods.  The  habits  of  his  early  life  stay  with  him  and  dominate 
all  his  business  transactions.  The  effect  of  town  life  upon  the 
retired  farmer  is,  however,  by  no  means  to  be  compared  with 
its  demoralizing  effect  upon  his  minor  children,  especially  his 
boys,  if  he  happens  to  have  any. 

As  a  traveler  moves  westward,  if  he  keeps  his  eyes,  or  rather 
his  ears,  open,  he  becomes  more  and  more  impressed  at  the 
roughness  and  even  profanity  of  the  language  which  he  hears  in 
public  places.  This  impression,  however,  is  due  partly  to  the 
fact  that  the  ordinary  traveler  only  sees  and  hears  what  goes  on 
about  the  railway  stations,  hotel  corridors,  and  similar  places, 
and  the  class  of  people  who  infest  such  places  are  by  no  means 
representative.  When  he  gets  away  from  beaten  lines  of  travel, 
out  into  the  rural  districts,  this  impression  is  by  no  means  so 
vivid.  Nevertheless,  it  remains,  and  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that 
there  is  more  rough  language  in  the  West  than  in  the  East.  At 
the  same  time,  if  he  takes  the  trouble  to  attend  country  churches 
and  to  form  some  idea  of  the  popular  interest  in  religious  matters, 
he  is  impressed  with  the  piety  of  the  people.  It  will  usually 
take  him  some  time  to  reconcile  these  two  apparently  contra- 
dictory impressions,  but  the  explanation  is  that  as  one  moves 
westward  through  the  agricultural  districts  he  meets  fewer  and 
fewer  of  that  class  which  is  so  numerous  in  cities  and  also  in  the 
rural  districts  of  the  East,  who  are  neither  pious  nor  wicked— 
simply  indifferent.  In  other  words,  it  seems  that  throughout  the 
West,  especially  beyond  the  Missouri  River,  every  man  is  either 
pious  or  profane,  and  the  prevailing  type  of  piety  is  of  the 
Methodistic  sort,  just  as  the  prevailing  type  of  impiety  is  of  the 
turbulent,  swearing  sort. 

Politically,  the  West  is  rapidly  settling  down  to  more  fixed 
habits  of  thought,  though  it  had  its  period  of  unrest.  In  the 
early  seventies,  and  again  in  the  early  nineties,  the  "Western 
farmer  became  the  spoiled  child  of  American  politics.  He  has 
been  flattered  and  cajoled  by  demagogues  until  he  came  to  think 
himself  the  most  important  factor  in  our  social  system.  This 
position  he  has  now  been  deprived  of  by  the  wage-worker,  who 
is  to-day  laying  the  flattering  unction  to  his  soul  that  he  is  the 
most  important  personage  in  the  universe.  To  be  sure,  neither 
the  Grange  nor  the  Farmers'  Alliance  in  their  wildest  days  ap- 


44  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

preached  in  arrogance  the  labor  organizations  of  the  present; 
nor  did  they  ever,  either  directly  or  indirectly,  countenance 
violence  or  lawlessness  of  any  kind.  This  is  probably  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  farmers,  as  a  class,  are  vastly  more  intelligent  and 
law-abiding  than  the  rank  and  file  of  the  wage-workers,  though 
they  are  more  numerous  and  politically  more  powerful. 

The  corn  belt  is  the  most  considerable  area  in  the  world  where 
agriculture  is  uniformly  prosperous.  This  prosperity  is,  more- 
over, healthful  and  natural,  and  not  artificial,  like  the  sugar- 
beet  industry,  for  example,  which  has  never  in  any  country 
shown  its  ability  to  stand  alone  unaided  by  government  favors, 
nor,  like  much  of  our  manufacturing  prosperity,  based  upon 
government  protection.  The  people  engaged  in  the  corn-growing 
industry  are  an  independent,  progressive  class,  drawing  their 
sustenance  from  the  soil,  and  not  from  other  people. 

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Winsor,  Justin.     Westward  Movement.     Houghton,  Boston. 


CHAPTEE  III 
THE  OLD  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEW 

SOCIAL  CONDITION  OF  THE  OLD  AND  THE 
NEW  SOUTH  * 

PHILIP   ALEXANDER   BRUCE 

BROADLY  speaking,  no  institutions  of  the  South  were  so  pro- 
foundly affected  by  the  failure  of  secession  as  the  social.  It  is 
true  that  it  was  a  great  economic  revolution  to  pass  from  slave 
labor  to  free  labor,  but  the  ground  is  still  chiefly  tilled  by  the 
hand  of  the  Negro.  The  large  plantation  has  been  cut  up  into 
numerous  estates,  but  the  same  staples  continue  to  be  cultivated. 
There  has  been  a  radical  alteration  in  political  conditions,  but, 
on  the  whole,  the  representatives  of  the  Southern  States  in  their 
local  legislatures  and  in  the  national  Congress  are  drawn  from  the 
same  general  class  as  they  were  in  times  of  slavery.  The  eco- 
nomic and  political  life  of  the  South  has  been  transformed,  but 
transformed  to  a  degree  that  falls  short  of  the  change  that  has 
taken  place  in  its  social  life ;  here  the  change  has  been  complete 
so  far  as  the  rural  districts,  in  which  the  overwhelming  mass  of 
the  Southern  people  reside,  are  involved.  The  French  Revolu- 
tion, with  its  drastic  laws  touching  the  ownership  of  land,  did 
not  sweep  away  the  aristocracy  of  France  one-half  as  thoroughly 
as  the  abolition  of  slavery  swept  away  the  old  rural  aristocracy 
of  the  South.  The  social  condition  of  this  part  of  the  Union  is 
now  the  reverse  of  what  it  was  before  the  War  of  the  Secession ; 
then  all  that  was  best  in  the  social  life  of  the  people  was  to  be 
found  in  the  country;  now  all  that  is  best  is  to  be  found  in  the 
city. 

The  close  of  the  great  war  marked  the  end  of  a  society  that  had 
safely  passed  through  all  the  vicissitudes  of  several  hundred 

i  Adapted  from  "The  Rise  of  the  New  South,"  pp.  421-435,  Barrie,  Phila- 
delphia, 1905. 

46 


THE  OLD  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEW         47 

years.  The  peculiar  social  life  of  the  Southern  States,  as  a  body, 
in  consequence  of  its  being  coincident  with  the  very  existence  of 
these  States,  had  permeated  with  its  spirit  the  genius  of  the 
Southern  people  from  generation  to  generation,  until  it  had 
become  the  most  powerful  of  all  the  influences  in  molding  their 
character  and  destiny.  This  social  life  rested  primarily  on  the 
system  of  large  plantations.  In  the  early  part  of  the  history 
of  the  older  Southern  communities — Virginia  and  Maryland,  for 
instance — when  the  plantation  system,  as  it  existed  before  the 
war,  was  founded,  this  system  derived  its  strength,  not  from 
slavery,  but  from  indentured  white  service, — which,  however, 
was  not  unlike  slavery  in  spirit  and  influence, — 'but  as  time  went 
on,  its  principal  support  became  the  institution  of  slavery  itself. 
As  the  number  of  Negroes  increased,  which  they  did  very  rapidly 
after  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  both  by  natural 
addition  and  importation,  the  individual  plantation  grew  larger 
and  larger  in  order  to  create  room  for  the  employment  of  super- 
abundant labor.  Not  even  the  opening  up  of  new  territory  could 
carry  off  the  surplus  slaves.  The  tendency  toward  the  engross- 
ment of  the  soil  in  a  few  hands  was  just  as  remarkable  in  Vir- 
ginia, the  oldest  of  the  Southern  States,  as  it  was  in  Texas  and 
Mississippi  among  the  youngest,  and  it  was  just  as  strong  in 
1861,  when  the  war  began,  as  it  was  two  hundred  years  earlier. 

What  did  this  engrossment  of  land  through  so  many  genera- 
tions mean  from  a  social  point  of  view?  It  meant  that  from 
1624,  when  the  plantation  system  became  firmly  established  in 
Colonial  Virginia,  down  to  1861,  when  it  prevailed  in  the  most 
extreme  form  from  one  end  of  the  South  to  the  other,  there 
existed  a  class  in  every  Southern  community,  whose  social  pre- 
eminence rested  as  distinctly  upon  vast  landed  possessions  as  the 
like  preeminence  of  the  English  aristocracy.  The  South 
illustrated  anew  a  fact  that  had  been  strikingly  illustrated  in 
the  history  of  England:  namely  that  there  is  something  in  the 
ownership  of  the  soil,  confined  to  a  comparatively  small  number, 
that  gives  peculiar  social  distinction  to  the  class  possessing  it. 
The  social  prestige  of  great  landed  property  was  rendered  the 
more  impressive  in  the  Southern  States  by  the  large  retinues  of 
slaves;  there  was,  for  that  reason,  a  more  baronial  importance 
about  such  an  estate  than  about  the  like  estate  of  the  English 


48  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

nobleman  of  the  same  day,  whose  dependents  and  retainers  were 
at  liberty,  if  they  chose,  to  transfer  their  services  to  another 
employer.  The  slave  belonged  to  the  master  absolutely;  the  tie 
could  only  be  severed  by  the  latter 's  will.  The  complete  sub- 
serviency of  the  relation  gave  a  certain  barbaric  aspect  to  the 
condition  of  the  great  Southern  landed  proprietor,  but  the  social 
life  which  centered  in  him  was  on  that  account  not  the  less  truly 
distinguished. 

In  possession  of  a  great  estate  in  a  comparatively  thinly 
settled  country,  stocked  up  with  hundreds  of  slaves,  who  were 
in  the  habit  of  looking  to  him  for  everything  in  life,  the 
Southern  landowner,  under  the  old  system,  was,  naturally 
enough,  remarkable  for  a  proud  and  aristocratic  spirit.  This 
was  the  general  tone  which  men  of  his  class  gave  to  the  highest 
social  life  of  the  South.  There  were,  of  course,  no  legally  de- 
termined and  fixed  ranks  in  that  life,  but  the  line  of  separation 
was  as  clearly  defined,  and  as  firmly  drawn  as  if  the  hereditary 
principle  of  caste  had  a  distinct  recognition,  as  in  France  under 
the  ancient  monarchy.  The  opportunities  for  accumulating 
large  estates  by  the  exercise  of  great  talent  for  heaping  up  money 
were  very  few.  The  city  shop  and  the  country  store  of  the  South 
were  narrow  fields  of  operation  for  this  purpose.  The  highest 
rank  in  society  was  not  receiving  unceasing  additions  in  great 
numbers  from  the  lower,  in  consequence  of  success  in  gathering 
together  fortunes,  as  has  always  been  the  case  at  the  North, 
where  trade  has  ever  been  an  unfailing  means  of  building  up  new 
families.  There  were,  it  is  true,  many  accessions  in  the  Southern 
States,  but  it  required  a  full  generation  at  least  to  envelop  the 
intruder  in  the  odor  of  social  sanctity,  unless  he  had  secured  an 
exceptional  connection  by  marriage.  Pride  of  ancestry  was 
one  of  the  most  powerful  of  all  social  influences  in  the  South,  and 
the  ability  to  prove  a  long  and  distinguished  descent  one  of  the 
most  valued  of  possessions. 

Unlike  the  society  of  England,  that  of  the  South  possessed 
no  common  center  resembling  London  to  direct  general  taste 
and  govern  fashion. 

The  social  life  of  every  large  plantation  community  was  re- 
stricted to  the  bounds  of  the  community ;  it  was  the  social  life  of 
neighborhoods,  which  might  have  a  radius  of  as  much  as  twenty 


.  THE  OLD  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEW         49 

miles ;  in  this  circuit  everywhere  in  the  older  States  of  the  South 
was  to  be  found  a  social  life  reflecting  a  high  degree  of  culture, 
refinement,  and  intelligence.  The  direct  effect  of  the  plantation 
life  was  to  foster  all  the  influences  giving  strength  and  per- 
manence to  the  family.  The  love  of  home  was  increased,  not 
only  by  long  personal  association  with  the  spot,  but  also  by  tra- 
ditions running  back  many  generations  into  the  past.  Around  it 
gathered  the  memories  of  a  family  life  as  old,  in  many  cases,  as 
the  first  settlement  of  the  country.  The  house  in  which  the 
planter  resided  had  been  erected  perhaps  a  hundred  or  more 
years  before,  and  was  hallowed  by  innumerable  events  in  the 
family  history. 

The  ties  of  family  were  strengthened,  not  only  by  long  trans- 
mitted influences  of  this  character,  but  also  by  the  fact  that, 
under  that  system,  sons,  as  a  rule,  settled  on  lands  which  had 
been  given  them  by  their  fathers  in  the  neighborhood  of  the 
paternal  estates.  In  time,  there  sprang  up  a  community  united 
by  the  bonds  of  closest  kinship;  and  as  the  years  passed,  and 
brothers  and  sisters  had  children  of  their  own,  these  bonds  were 
knit  more  closely  together  still  by  the  intermarriage  of  cousins. 
A  whole  countryside  was  frequently  descended  from  the  same 
ancestors,  and  the  most  skillful  genealogist  often  found  it  im- 
possible to  follow  the  ramifications  of  the  common  strain.  It 
needed  but  the  law  of  primogeniture  to  make  the  state  of 
Southern  society  precisely  similar  in  spirit  to  the  society  of 
England  in  the  previous  century. 

That  society  was  even  more  given  to  hospitality  than  English 
society  in  the  country.  There  was  practically  an  unlimited 
supply  of  servants ;  the  abundance  of  provisions  of  all  kinds  was 
inexhaustible;  and  there  was  no  effort  at  display  imposing  ex- 
pense and  inconvenience.  The  seclusion  of  the  planter's  life 
threw  around  the  visitor  an  unusual  degree  of  interest;  hospi- 
tality, at  first  a  pleasure,  took  on  very  shortly  a  sacred  character 
—it  became  a  duty  which  it  was  always  delightful  to  perform. 
The  guest,  as  often  a  stranger  as  a  kinsman,  was  rarely  absent 
from  the  plantation  residence. 

Below  the  highest  class  of  planters  there  was  practically  only 
one  great  class  among  the  whites,  a  class  which  the  general 
changes  following  the  war  have  brought  into  the  greatest  promi- 


50  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

nence,  but  which,  under  the  system  prevailing  before  1860, 
occupied  a  position  of  small  social  importance.  The  class  made 
up  of  the  small  landowners  always  formed  the  body  of  the 
white  population.  Its  members,  as  a  rule,  owned  from  fifty  to 
two  hundred  acres  of  land,  which  they  worked  themselves,  with 
the  assistance,  at  the  most,  of  a  few  slaves. 

When  the  first  patents  were  sued  out,  it  was  deemed  all-im- 
portant to  take  up  the  most  fertile  soil  as,  in  the  absence  of  arti- 
ficial manures,  the  best  fitted  for  the  culture  of  cotton  or  tobacco, 
and  such  as  was  least  likely  to  be  exhausted  by  prolonged  tillage. 
The  lands  preferred  were  those  situated  on  the  rivers  and  larger 
streams  which  furnished  an  alluvial  deposit.  The  constant  aim 
of  the  wealthy  planter  was  to  engross  as  extensive  an  area  of  these 
lands  as  he  could  acquire ;  broad  reaches  of  upland  were  patented 
or  purchased  as  a  means  of  obtaining  wood  for  fuel  and  timber  for 
building,  and  as  affording  a  wide  range  for  the  browsing  of 
cattle.  The  mass  of  the  white  population,  the  true  yeomanry  of 
the  country,  were  confined  to  the  ridges  and  narrow  low  grounds 
of  the  small  streams,  the  soil  of  which  was  inferior  in  productive 
capacity  as  compared  with  the  grounds  lying  around  the  large 
streams  held  by  the  wealthy  planters. 

The  class  of  small  landowners  represented,  in  many  instances, 
a  high  degree  of  thrift,  but  in  some  cases  an  extreme  degree  of 
poverty,  according  to  the  character  of  the  different  holdings, 
Many  of  the  small  estates  were  cultivated  with  great  care  and 
enabled  the  owners  to  live  in  comfort  and  abundance.  The  tables 
were  set  forth  with  a  considerable  variety  of  food;  there  was  a 
slave  to  furnish  the  household  service ;  the  residence  though  plain 
was  substantially  built  and  sufficiently  spacious;  to  it  were 
attached  small  gardens  for  both  flowers  and  vegetables;  also  an 
orchard  of  fruit  trees  enclosed  as  a  pen  for  the  hogs ;  and  there 
were  several  milch  cows,  and  a  horse  and  vehicle  for  conveying 
the  family  to  church.  During  the  week,  the  owner  with  his  sons 
and  a  Negro  or  two  hoed  and  plowed  in  his  tobacco  and  corn 
fields.  When  the  end  of  the  year  came,  he  had  perhaps  several 
hundred  dollars  in  his  chest.  If  ambitious  of  improving  his  con- 
ditions, he  expended  his  savings  in  the  purchase  of  more  land,  by 
which  he  was  enabled  to  plant  cotton  or  tobacco  over  a  larger  area 
of  ground.  The  increase  from  one  couple  of  slaves  made  a  con- 


THE  OLD  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEW         51 

siderable  addition  to  his  small  fortune.  Even  when  he  had  no 
occasion  himself  for  the  labor  of  the  young  Negroes  as  soon  as 
they  were  strong  enough  to  work,  he  could  hire  them  at  a  profit ; 
many  small  landowners  derived  a  good  income  from  this  letting 
of  slaves  who  had  been  trained  by  them  for  some  mechanical 
trade. 

The  landowner  whose  entire  holding  consisted  of  soil  on  the 
ridge  was  by  no  means  so  well  off  as  the  members  of  his  own 
class  who  owned  land  on  the  small  streams.  The  expression 
' '  po '  white, ' '  so  freely  used  by  the  slaves  as  a  term  of  opprobrium, 
was  applied  especially  to  these  inhabitants  of  the  highlands. 
The  narrowness  of  their  fortunes  was  disclosed  in  many  ways — 
in  the  sallowness  of  their  complexions,  resulting  chiefly  from  in- 
sufficient and  unwholesome  food — in  the  raggedness  of  the  cloth- 
ing— in  the  bareness  and  discomfort  of  their  cabins,  which  were 
mere  hovels  with  the  most  slovenly  surroundings — and  in  the 
thinness  and  weakness  of  the  few  cattle  they  possessed.  No- 
where could  there  be  found  a  population  more  wretched  in  some 
respects  than  this  section  of  the  Southern  whites,  the  in- 
habitants of  the  ridge  and  pine  barrens,  men  and  women  who  had 
no  interest  in  the  institution  of  slavery  and  whose  condition  of 
extreme  poverty  was  partly  due  to  the  system  o£  large  planta- 
tions. The  abundance  of  Negroes  diminished  the  calls  for  the 
labor  of  white  men,  which  might  have  been  furnished  by  this 
class,  and  the  engrossment  of  land  into  great  states  shut  them  off 
from  the  most  productive  soil. 

The  poor  white  man  of  energy  and  intelligence  could  look 
forward  to  but  one  career  which  gave  him  a  certain  opportunity 
to  improve  his  condition.  He  could  not  hope  to  get  anything  but 
a  bare  livelihood  out  of  his  impoverished  acres;  the  slave  me- 
chanics stood  in  the  way  of  his  securing  work  in  any  local  handi- 
craft, and  there  were  no  manufacturing  towns  where  he  could 
obtain  a  position  in  a  factory;  but  throughout  the  South  there 
was  a  constant  need  of  faithful  and  resolute  overseers.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  the  indigent  class  of  whites,  the  overseerships 
were  most  desirable,  not  only  as  indicating  a  social  advance  in 
life,  but  as  offering  a  very  sure  prospect  of  accumulating  a  com- 
petency. This  was  the  beginning  of  many  considerable  fortunes 
in  lands  and  slaves. 


52  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  relations  of  the  small  landowners  with  their  neighbor,  the 
large  planter,  were  marked  by  a  spirit  of  kindness,  goodwill  and 
esteem.  They  looked  to  him  as  their  natural  leader.  The  line 
of  social  difference  was  never  crossed,  but  there  was  no  barrier 
to  the  display  of  the  warmest  regard  in  their  personal  association 
with  him.  The  society  which  they  formed  among  themselves  was 
noted  for  its  homely  respectability,  but  was  not  remarkable  for 
any  features  of  general  interest.  The  simplicity  distinguishing 
the  social  life  of  the  leading  planters  took,  in  the  case  of  that 
of  the  lower,  the  form  of  extreme  plainness.  The  existence  led 
by  this  section  of  the  people  was  one  of  unusual  seclusion;  in- 
deed, their  only  places  for  general  meeting  were  the  churchyard, 
the  courthouse,  and  the  store,  while  the  furthest  point  to  which 
they  traveled  was  the  town  in  which  they  found  a  market  for 
the  sale  of  their  cotton  or  tobacco.  Their  entire  withdrawal 
from  the  world  produced  a  marked  primitiveness  of  character 
which  was  transmitted  from  generation  to  generation. 

There  were  two  influences  to  maintain  great  pride  of  spirit  in 
persons  of  this  social  rank  even  when  they  had  to  endure  extreme 
poverty.  First,  they  followed  the  independent  life  of  the  plan- 
tation; it  is  true  that  their  estates  were  small,  but  they  were 
absolute  masters  of  their  own  property.  Secondly,  the  presence 
of  the  slave,  a  standing  object  of  social  degradation,  inspired  the 
plainest  white  man  with  a  sense  of  his  superiority  of  race,  a  con- 
viction tending  to  strengthen  his  self-esteem  as  an  individual. 
These  influences  gave  a  prouder  tone  to  the  whole  social  life  of 
the  common  people  of  the  South  than  would  otherwise  have 
distinguished  it.  On  the  other  hand,  the  absence  of  educational 
advantages  had  a  considerable  effect  in  sinking  this  social  life 
below  the  point  which  has  been  reached  by  the  same  grade  of 
population  elsewhere.  Illiteracy,  as  we  have  already  pointed 
out,  was  very  prevalent ;  it  was  one  of  the  unfortunate  results  of 
the  old  plantation  system  that  it  curtailed  all  educational  facili- 
ties, by  its  tendency  to  reduce  the  number  of  inhabitants  occupy- 
ing a  given  area  of  country. 

Taken  as  a  whole,  the  common  people  of  the  Southern  States, 
during  the  existence  of  slavery,  were  an  unusually  intelligent, 
conservative,  and  sturdy  population.  The  rank  and  file  of  the 
armies  of  the  Confederacy  in  the  War  of  Secession  were  chiefly 


THE  OLD  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEW         53 

drawn  from  this  class,  and  surely  the  world  never  saw  a  body  of 
soldiers  more  distinguished  for  the  qualities  that  win  the  respect 
and  admiration  of  mankind. 

The  higher  planting  class  of  the  South  staked  everything  on 
the  issue  of  the  war — their  lives,  their  fortunes,  the  framework 
of  their  social  life,  their  political  supremacy,  their  all.  When 
the  more  violent  influences  which  the  destruction  caused  by  the 
conflict  set  in  motion  had  practically  finished  their  work,  and  this 
was  done  in  a  very  few  years  after  the  close  of  the  contest,  the 
society  in  the  rural  districts  of  the  South  was  like  a  vast  field  of 
grain  over  which  a  reaper  had  passed,  cutting  off  the  heads  of 
the  tallest  stalks  only,  while  it  left  practically  untouched  those  of 
less  height.  The  great  planters  were,  with  hardly  an  exception, 
ruined  in  the  end,  even  though  they  succeeded  for  a  short  time  in 
holding  on  to  their  estates.  But  as  a  body,  the  small  planters, 
who  had  few  slaves  and  who  were  cultivators  of  their  own  ground, 
remained  upon  as  good  a  footing  as  they  occupied  before  the  War 
of  the  Secession  began ;  indeed,  the  general  position  of  the  lower 
whites  of  the  South  to-day  is,  from  an  economic  point  of  view, 
far  more  advantageous  than  it  was  previous  to  1860. 

This  is  due  to  several  causes.  First,  in  the  breaking  up  of  the 
large  estates,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  were  for  the  most  part 
made  up  of  the  most  fertile  and  most  eligibly  situated  lands  in 
the  country,  the  small  proprietors,  who,  before  the  war,  had 
been  confined  to  the  ridges  and  creek  bottoms,  were  able  to 
purchase  ground  of  the  finest  quality,  because  offered  for  sale  in 
small  tracts,  without  competition  on  the  part  of  the  former  great 
and  wealthy  proprietors.  This  class,  of  old,  always  overbid  the 
would-be  buyers  of  small  means.  Many  of  the  richest  acres  to 
be  found  in  the  Southern  States  are  now  owned  by  such  men, 
who,  had  slavery  been  prolonged,  would  have  spent  their  whole 
lives  in  cultivating  a  poor  soil  with  very  small  returns. 

Secondly,  the  complete  alteration  in  the  economic  system  of 
the  Southern  States  has  directed  the  attention  of  their  most 
enterprising  business  men  to  manufactures  of  all  kinds,  but 
especially  to  the  manufacture  of  cotton.  The  development  of  this 
branch  of  industry,  which,  before  the  war,  was  carried  on  in  a 
very  limited  way,  has  given  employment  to  many  thousands  of 
operatives,  drawn  entirely  from  among  those  persons  of  the  rural 


54  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

population  who  earned  a  livelihood  by  cultivating  the  ground 
in  small  tracts  with  their  own  hands.  Had  slavery  not  been 
abolished  and  the  large  plantation  system  destroyed,  the  manu- 
facturing interests  would  doubtless  have  continued  to  languish; 
and  the  opportunities  now  open  in  this  rapidly  expanding  de- 
partment of  industry  would  perhaps  never  have  arisen  to  improve 
the  condition  of  the  poorer  classes  of  the  Southern  whites. 

Thirdly,  during  the  existence  of  slavery,  it  was  to  the  interest 
of  the  large  landed  proprietors,  who  controlled  the  industrial 
affairs  of  every  rural  community,  to  train  their  own  Negroes  in 
the  different  handicrafts;  there  were  blacksmiths,  carpenters, 
wheelwrights,  masons,  bricklayers,  shoemakers,  and  saddlers  con- 
nected with  all  the  most  extensive  plantations,  and,  with  hardly 
an  exception,  they  were  the  slaves  of  the  owners.  The  only 
white  mechanics  to  be  found  in  those  parts  of  the  South  where 
the  black  population  was  very  numerous  were  residents  of  the 
scattered  villages  and  towns.  The  Negro  under  the  new  system 
shows  in  the  country  a  marked  distaste  for  every  branch  of  me- 
chanics, and  the  handicrafts  there  have  in  consequence  steadily 
gravitated  to  white  tradesmen.  Thus  the  poorer  class  of  white 
persons  have  a  means  of  earning  a  livelihood  and  even  a  com- 
petence, of  which  they  were  practically  deprived  before  the 
abolition  of  slavery;  employment  in  this  department  of  activity 
is  now  afforded  to  tens  of  thousands  of  men  of  their  race  where, 
during  the  existence  of  the  large  plantation,  employment  was 
afforded  to  hundreds  only,  because  in  reality  almost  the  entire 
work  in  his  line  was  done  by  slaves. 

These  are  three  most  important  ways  in  which  the  old  class 
of  small  landed  proprietors  have  benefited  by  the  change  in  the 
economic  system  of  the  Southern  States.  With  increased  op- 
portunity for  improving  their  pecuniary  standing,  it  has  followed 
that  their  general  social  condition  is  better  than  it  used  to  be, 
but  in  no  social  particular  as  yet  has  the  new  order  in  the 
Southern  rural  districts  become  a  satisfactory  substitute  for  that 
old  order  which  gave  the  South  its  social  charm  under  slave  in- 
stitutions. The  characteristics  of  the  ruling  class  of  small  land- 
owners in  the  country  to-day — which  before  the  war  was  the  class 
occupying  an  entirely  subordinate  social  rank — are  essentially 
what  they  have  always  been.  The  prosperity  of  this  class  has 


THE  OLD  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEW         55 

not  been  sufficient  as  yet  to  allow  them  to  make  any  real  advance 
in  social  attractiveness;  the  life  which  they  lead  still  removes 
them  from  the  general  currents  of  the  world;  they  are  still  the 
primitive  people,  as  in  former  times,  with  social  qualities  com- 
manding respect,  but  with  none  to  produce  a  society  so  notable 
as  that  which  passed  away.  Education  is  more  general,  on 
account  of  the  establishment  of  free  schools ;  some  social  ad- 
vantages are  enjoyed,  which,  under  the  old  system,  were  beyond 
the  reach  of  all  except  the  rich,  but  in  its  principal  features,  the 
social  condition  of  the  rural  population  remains  as  it  was  when 
subordinated  to  that  of  the  higher  planting  class  during  the 
existence  of  slavery.  How  entirely  this  latter  class  has  vanished 
and  how  wholly  the  country  is  given  over  to  the  former  lower 
rank  in  society  is  nowhere  more  conspicuous  than  in  the  rural 
churches.  Owing  to  the  increase  of  the  white  population,  these 
churches  are  more  fully  attended  than  they  ever  were,  but  the 
families  belonging  to  the  old  rural  gentry  are  no  longer  to  be 
seen  there. 

A  general  social  equality  prevails  among  the  whites  in  all  the 
rural  districts.  In  the  agricultural  regions,  outside  of  the  towns, 
there  are,  as  yet,  no  means  of  accumulating  sufficient  fortune  to 
give  superiority  to  new  families  possessing  talent  for  getting 
money;  the  old  rural  gentry  has  not  been  succeeded,  even  in  a 
comparatively  remote  degree,  by  a  new  gentry  which  rests  its 
claims  to  social  distinction  upon  large  estates  acquired  in  recent 
years.  In  the  rural  district,  all  the  tendencies  are  toward  a 
further  consolidation  of  the  existing  social  equality  among  the 
whites,  because  the  subdivision  of  the  land  means  a  further 
progress  toward  the  reduction  of  the  whole  number  of  white  in- 
habitants to  the  condition  of  the  men  who  work  the  soil  with  their 
own  hands.  There  are  no  substantial  social  distinctions  among 
manual  laborers  of  the  same  race.  The  small  farmer  and  the 
small  planter  who  are  making  up  to  an  increasing  extent  every 
year  the  entire  body  of  the  rural  white  inhabitants  may  hold 
themselves  a  little  above  their  white  assistants  who  are  without 
property,  but  there  is  no  real  difference  in  their  social  level.  We 
see  in  the  South  to-day  a  vast  rural  white  population,  which,  as 
a  whole,  stands  upon  the  same  footing,  a  footing  of  great  respect- 
ability, but  entirely  devoid  of  those  charms  which  made  the 


56  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

social  life  of  the  rural  gentry,  during  the  existence  of  slavery,  one 
of  the  most  attractive  in  the  world. 

What  has  become  of  the  descendants  of  this  rural  gentry  ?  As 
a  body  they  are  no  longer  to  be  found  in  the  country.  While 
many  have  emigrated  to  other  parts  of  the  Union,  the  far  greater 
number  have  settled  in  the  towns  of  the  South.  All  the  in- 
fluences of  the  old  system,  as  we  have  seen,  tended  directly  to 
the  discouragement  of  the  growth  of  cities ;  all  the  currents  ran 
toward  a  dispersion  of  the  population  over  an  ever  widening 
extent  of  space.  It  is  now  precisely  the  reverse.  The  drift  to- 
ward the  subdivision  of  land  signifies  a  drift  toward  the  con- 
centration of  population.  The  inability  of  the  petty  landholders 
to  produce  on  their  own  estates  the  artificial  supplies  they  re- 
quire, has  increased  the  importance  of  the  local  distributing  and 
manufacturing  centers,  both  great  and  small;  the  towns  have 
become  steadily  larger  each  year,  partly  in  consequence  of  the 
rising  rural  demand  for  manufactured  supplies;  while  the 
villages  have  grown  because  they  have  drawn  to  themselves  a 
greater  number  of  tradesmen  working  in  different  departments. 

The  comparative  unprofitableness  of  agriculture  under  the 
present  system,  unless  the  land  is  cultivated  by  the  owner  with  his 
own  hands,  thus  cutting  the  expenses  down  to  the  smallest  point, 
prompted  the  descendants  of  the  old  higher  planting  class  to  re- 
move to  the  Southern  cities  as  offering  a  better  opportunity  for 
the  improvement  of  their  fortunes.  In  addition,  they  expected 
to  find  there  the  best  social  advantages  which  the  new  order 
afforded. 

If  we  go  to  some  Southern  county,  which,  in  times  of  slavery 
was  the  seat  of  an  intelligent,  refined,  and  cultivated  gentry,  we 
shall  discover  that  the  only  society  there  possessing  any  distinc- 
tion is  centered  in  the  courthouse  town;  and  this  society  is 
generally  made  up  of  families  of  professional  men  whose  names 
are  amongst  the  most  ancient  .and  honorable  in  the  history  of 
their  State.  The  gentry  of  the  South,  from  having  been  asso- 
ciated only  with  life  in  the  country,  have  become  now  thoroughly 
identified  with  life  in  the  city.  The  energy  and  ability  that  have 
built  up  so  many  Southern  towns  in  so  short  a  time,  have  been 
drawn,  in  largest  measure,  from  a  class  that,  before  the  War  of 
Secession,  visited  the  city  only  in  winter  and  looked  upon  the 


THE  OLD  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEW  57 

country  as  offering  all  that  was  highest  and  most  interesting 
in  life  to  people  of  birth  and  culture.  In  the  course  of  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century  many  fortunes  have  been  made  by  repre- 
sentatives of  the  old  rural  gentry  who  have  emigrated  to  the 
towns,, but  there  has  been  no  disposition  in  these  representatives 
to  return  to  the  life  of  their  ancestors;  some  have  purchased 
rural  estates,  but  it  has  been  for  pleasure  and  recreation  during 
the  summer,  and  not  for  occupation  throughout  the  year. 

The  social  life  of  the  South  now  rests  upon  the  same  general 
foundation  as  the  social  life  of  the  North,  and  as  time  passes  the 
character  of  the  one  will  be  wholly  indistinguishable  from  the 
character  of  the  other.  The  country  districts  will  be  occupied 
exclusively  by  a  great  body  of  small  farmers,  planters,  and  their 
assistants  in  the  field.  The  whole  extent  of  the  soil  will  become, 
in  less  than  a  century,  so  subdivided  that  two  or  three  hundred 
acres  will  form  the  average  estate.  The  owners  of  the  land,  by 
the  vast  increase  in  the  rural  population  which  will  follow  this 
subdivision,  will  enjoy  to  a  far  greater  degree  than  they  do  at 
the  present  time  all  the  advantages  springing  from  a  teeming 
community — a,  more  frequent  and  more  diversified  social  inter- 
course, more  varied  and  refined  amusements,  a  larger  number  of 
public  schools,  and  a  more  thoroughly  organized  and  more  effi- 
cient system  of  public  education.  The  towns  and  cities  of  the 
South,  on  the  other  hand,  will  become,  as  they  have  done  in  the 
North,  the  centers  of  the  greatest  accumulations  of  wealth  and 
the  seats  of  the  highest  culture  and  refinement.  Here,  as  in  the 
Northern  towns  and  cities,  society  will  be  controlled,  to  an  ever 
increasing  degree,  by  families  whose  rise  to  social  prominence  has 
been  brought  about  by  the  extraordinary  talents  of  the  men  at 
their  head  for  building  up  great  fortunes.  The  influence  of  mere 
ancestry  going  back  many  generations,  perhaps  several  hundred 
years,  will  grow  less  socially  powerful  in  the  Southern  centers 
of  population,  where  the  ability  to  accumulate  money  already 
gives  the  highest  personal  consideration,  just  as  it  does  in  the 
like  Northern  communities  to-day.  The  material  spirit  will 
govern  the  forces  in  Southern  urban  society  precisely  as  it  has 
always  done  in  urban  society  of  the  North.  Indeed,  time  will 
only  show  more  clearly  that  the  defeat  of  the  South  in  the  War 
of  Secession  meant  the  complete  social  unification  of  the  United 


58  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

States  as  the  inevitable  result  of  the  economic  unification  that 
followed  almost  immediately  upon  the  destruction  of  the  institu- 
tion of  slavery. 


OUR  CAROLINA  HIGHLANDERS  1 

E.    C.   BRANSON 

WHAT  I  shall  say  or  try  to  say  concerns  the  seventeen  High- 
land counties  of  North  Carolina,  and  the  243,000  people  who 
dwell  in  this  land-locked  area.  This  is  the  region  and  these  are 
the  people  I  best  know  in  our  Southern  mountain  country.  I  as- 
sume to  speak  for  no  others. 

First  of  all  I  want  to  claim  for  the  whole  of  North  Carolina  an 
identity  with  our  mountain  people.  They  are  our  very  own  kith, 
kin,  and  kind.  They  are  not  a  peculiar  people — in  illiteracy, 
poverty,  degree  of  isolation,  fiery  individualism,  or  organ  izable 
qualities.  They  differ  in  no  essential  particular  from  the  demo- 
cratic mass  in  North  Carolina  in  mood,  humor,  temper,  and  atti- 
tudes. Their  economic  and  social  problems  are  not  regional; 
they  are  state-wide.  There  are  no  differences  in  kind,  and  few 
in  degree,  between  the  civilization  of  our  hill  country  and  that 
of  the  State  as  a  whole.  Its  virtues  and  its  deficiencies  are  ours, 
and  I  claim  them  as  our  own. 

Our  civilization  in  North  Carolina  is  primarily  rural.  Both 
the  strength  and  the  weakness  of  our  democracy  lie  in  this  fact. 
We  are  saturated  with  a  sense  of  equality.  We  stand  unabashed 
in  kingly  presences.  We  revel  in  assured  freedom.  We  have  a 
fierce  passion  for  self-government.  We  have  always  held  high 
the  spirit  of  revolt  against  centralized  power,  and  we  have  been 
quick  to  wrest  from  tyranny  its  crown  and  scepter.  All  of 
which  is  magnificent.  But  we  are  learning  that  untaught  and 
unrestrained  individualism  needs  to  develop  into  the  wisdom  and 
power  of  safe  self-government.  The  civic  and  social  mind  sup- 
plants the  personal  and  individual  view  of  life  all  too  slowly 
everywhere. 

i  Adapted  from  "Extension  Bureau  Circular,  No.  2,"  University  of  North 
Carolina. 


THE  OLD  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEW  59 

Our  dwellers  in  the  open  country  number  1,700,000,  and  they 
average  only  thirty-nine  to  the  square  mile. 

The  ills  attendant  upon  sparsity  of  population  in  rural  regions 
are  social  isolation  and  insulation,  raucous  individualism,  illit- 
eracy, suspicion,  social  aloofness,  lack  of  organization  and  co- 
operative enterprise ;  but  our  mountain  people  suffer  from  these 
deficiencies  not  a  whit  more  than  the  people  in  definite  areas  of 
the  tide-water  country  and  in  the  State  at  large. 

Everywhere  in  thinly  settled  country  regions  we  find  people 
here  and  there  who  are  suspicious,  secretive,  apathetic,  and  un- 
approachable ;  who  live  in  the  eighteenth  century  and  preserve 
the  language,  manners,  and  customs  of  a  past  long  dead  else- 
where, who  prefer  their  primitive,  ancient  ways,  who  are  ghet- 
toed  in  the  midst  of  present-day  civilization,  to  borrow  a  phrase 
from  President  Frost.  They  are  the  crab-like  souls  described 
by  Victor  Hugo  in  "Les  Miserables,"  who  before  advancing 
light  steadily  retreat  into  the  fringe  of  darkness.  People  like 
these  abound  in  Clinton  and  Franklin  counties  (New  York) 
where  an  eighth  of  the  native  white  voters  are  illiterate,  in 
Aroostook  County  (Maine)  where  nearly  a  fifth  of  the  native 
white  voters  cannot  read  their  ballots  or  write  their  names;  in 
Windham  County  (Connecticut),  where  an  eighth  of  the  white 
males  of  voting  age  are  illiterate.  Windham,  by  the  way,  lies 
midway  between  the  academic  effulgence  of  Yale  on  the  one 
hand  and  of  Harvard  on  the  other.  You  can  find  within  the 
sound  of  college  bells  anywhere  what  we  found  the  other  day 
in  a  field  survey  that  took  us  into  every  home  in  a  mid-state 
county  in  North  Carolina — a  family  of  whites  all  illiterate,  half 
the  children  dead  in  infancy,  and  never  a  doctor  in  the  house  in 
the  whole  history  of  the  family. 

All  the  ages  of  race  history  and  every  level  of  civilization  can 
be  found  in  any  county  or  community,  even  in  our  crowded 
centers  of  wealth  and  culture.  We.  need  not  hunt  for  eighteenth 
century  survivals  in  mountain  coves  alone. 

We  shall  not  make  headway  in  well-meant  work  in  the  moun- 
tains unless  we  can  bring  to  it  what  Giddings  calls  a  conscious- 
ness of  kind.  "We  need  to  be  less  aware  of  picturesque,  amusing, 
or  distressing  differences,  and  more  keenly  conscious  of  the  kin- 
ship of  the  mountain  people  with  their  kind  elsewhere  and 


60  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

everywhere.  Otherwise  we  shall  bring  to  noble  effort  in  the 
mountains  a  certain  disabling  attitude  that  is  fatal  to  success. 

And  so  over  against  the  types  we  find  in  the  pages  of  Crad- 
dock,  Fox,  Kephart,  and  the  rest,  let  us  set  the  mountain  people 
as  they  are  related  to  the  civilization  of  which  they  are  a  part. 
I  therefore  urge  upon  your  attention  the  fact  that  they  are  not 
more  poverty-stricken,  nor  more  lawless  and  violent,  nor  more 
unorganizable  than  the  democratic  mass  in  rural  North  Carolina. 

1.  In  the  first  place  and  quite  contrary  to  popular  notions, 
our  mountains  are  not  a  region  of  wide-spread  poverty.  In  per 
capita  rural  wealth  Alleghany  is  the  richest  county  in  North 
Carolina.  Among  our  100  counties,  five  highland  counties  rank 
1st,  5th,  6th,  13th,  and  14th  in  the  order  named,  in  the  per 
capita  farm  wealth  of  country  populations;  and  two  more  are 
just  below  the  state  average  in  this  particular.  The  people  of 
these  counties  are  not  poor,  as  country  wealth  is  reckoned  in 
North  Carolina.  They  dwell  in  a  land  of  vegetables  and  fruits, 
grain  crops,  hay  and  forage,  flocks  and  herds.  It  is  a  land  of 
overflowing  abundance.  It  is  not  easy  for  such  people  to  feel 
that  they  are  fit  subjects  for  missionary  school  enterprises.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  they  need  our  money  far  less  than  they  need 
appreciative  understanding  and  homebred  leadership.  Their 
wealth  is  greater  than  their  willingness  to  convert  it  into  social 
advantages.  They  need  to  be  shown  how  to  realize  the  possi- 
bilities of  their  own  soils  and  souls.  Mountain  civilization,  like 
every  other,  will  rise  to  higher  levels  when  the  people  them- 
selves tug  at  their  own  boot-straps ;  and  there  is  no  other  way. 

Approaching  the  poverty  of  our  mountain  people  from  an- 
other angle,  let  us  consider  indoor  pauperism  in  11  mountain 
counties  that  maintain  county  homes  or  poor  houses.  The  1910 
Census  discloses  an  average  rate  for  the  United  States  of  190 
almshouse  paupers  per  100,000  inhabitants.  In  North  Carolina 
the  rate  was  96;  in  these  11  highland  counties  it  was  only  79. 
Six  of  the  mountain  counties  make  a  far  better  showing  than 
the  State  at  large. 

But  we  may  make  still  another  and  better  approach  to  the 
subject  of  poverty  in  our  mountains  by  examining  the  outside 
pauper  rates;  better,  because  outside  help  is  less  repugnant  to 
the  feelings  than  residence  in  the  poor  house.  In  1914  the  state 


THE  OLD  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEW         61 

rate  for  outside  pauperism  was  234  per  100,000  inhabitants.  In 
12  highland  counties  the  average  rate  was  205.  Seven  of  the 
counties  have  rates  far  smaller  than  the  state  average,  ranging 
from  35  in  Mitchell  to  184  in  Cherokee ;  three  are  just  below  the 
state  average ;  and  only  two  are  near  the  bottom. 

It  ought  to  be  clear  that  poverty  in  the  mountains  of  North 
Carolina  is  actually  and  relatively  less  than  elsewhere  in  the 
State.  Here  both  indoor  and  outside  paupers  in  12  counties  in 
1914  numbered  only  559  in  a  population  of  209,000  souls. 

2.  In  the  second  place,  illiteracy  among  native  whites  in  our 
mountains  is  not  more   distressing  than  white   illiteracy  else- 
where in  the  State.     The  average  rate  for  the  mountain  region 
is  15.1  per  cent.,  due  to  excessive  white  illiteracy  rates  in  eight 
counties.     More  than  one-seventh  or  15.1  per  cent,  of  all  the 
white  people  ten  years  old  and  older  in  17  mountain  counties 
are  illiterate.     It  is  appalling;  but  the  fact  that  nearly  one- 
eighth  of  all  the  white  people  of  these  ages  the  whole  State  over 
are  illiterate  is  also  appalling.     But  nearly  one-fifth  or  18.5  per 
cent,  of  all  our  people,  both  races  counted,  are  illiterate;  and 
this  fact  is  still  more  appalling.     There  is  comfort,  however,  in 
the  further  fact  that  with  a  single  exception  North  Carolina  led 
the  Union  in  inroads  upon  illiteracy  during  the  last  census  pe- 
riod, and  we  are  running  Kentucky  a  close  second  in  Moon- 
light Schools. 

Our  mountain  people  are  not  peculiar,  even  in  their  illiteracy. 
Sparsely  settled  rural  people  are  everywhere  apt  to  be  fiercely  in- 
dividualistic, incapable  of  concerted  effort,  and  unduly  illiterate ; 
both  behind  and  beyond  mountain  walls,  in  New  York  State, 
Maine,  Connecticut,  and  North  Carolina  alike.  The  problems  of 
developing  democracy  in  our  highlands,  I  repeat,  are  state-wide, 
not  merely  regional.  They  concern  a  sparsely  settled  rural  pop- 
ulation, socially  insulated,  fiercely  individualistic,  unduly  illit- 
erate, unorganized,  and  non-social,  both  in  the  mountains  and 
in  the  State  at  large. 

3.  For  instance,  the  bad  eminence  held  by  North  Carolina  in 
homicide  rates  among  the  24  states  of  the  registration  area  is  due 
to  the  slow  socialization  of  a  population  that  is  still  nearly  four- 
fifths  rural.     In  1913,  we  led  the  registration  states  with  an 
urban  rate  of  274  homicides  per  million  inhabitants,  and  a  rural 


62  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

rate  of  173,  against  a  general  rate  of  72  in  the  registration  area. 
I  may  say  in  passing  that  Virginia,  Kentucky,  and  North  Car- 
olina are  the  only  southern  states  in  the  registration  area,  and 
that  24  states  are  all  told  still  on  the  outside. 

Town  rates  are  higher  than  country  rates  in  twenty-one  states, 
largely  because  the  steady  coward  drift  of  country  people  in- 
troduces into  the  organized  life  of  American  towns  an  element 
that  is  slow  to  learn  the  lessons  of  social  adjustment.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  high  spirited  retreat  into  inaccessible  coves  be- 
fore advancing  civilization.  They  climb  into  the  high  levels  of 
the  Great  Smokies  in  Haywood,  Swain,  and  Graham,  where  they 
settle  personal  difficulties  in  the  highland  style  of  primitive 
times.  These  counties  lead  the  mountain  region  in  homicide 
rates.  These  are  the  people,  by  the  way,  among  whom  Kephart 
dwelt  and  who  colored  his  impressions  of  our  entire  mountain 
civilization.  But  just  as  might  be  expected,  three  of  our  low- 
land counties  have  just  as  fearful  records.  No,  our  Highlanders 
are  not  peculiar  even  in  their  fierce  and  fiery  individualism. 
Human  life  is  just  as  safe  west  of  the  Ridge  as  east  of  it. 

4.  Kephart  urges  that  the  mountain  people  cannot  pull  to- 
gether, except  as  kinsmen  or  partisans.  "Speak  to  them  of  com- 
munity interests,  try  to  show  them  the  advantages  of  coopera- 
tion," says  he,  "and  you  might  just  as  well  be  proffering  advice 
to  the  North  Star.  They  will  not  work  together  zealously  even 
to  improve  their  neighborhood  roads. ' '  But  these  are  the  faults 
of  sparsely  settled  rural  populations  in  the  mountains  and  on 
the  plains  alike.  Nothing  could  be  worse,  for  instance,  than  the 
country  roads  of  southern  Illinois  in  the  bad  winter  seasons. 
Failure  to  organize  and  cooperate  is  the  cardinal  weakness  of 
country  people  everywhere. 

True,  there  were  no  improved  country  roads  in  four  counties 
west  of  the  Ridge  on  January  1,  1915 ;  but  also,  four  neighbor- 
ing counties  in  the  Albemarle  country  fall  into  the  same  category. 
Thirty-one  of  our  counties  in  1914  had  ten  per  cent,  or  less  of 
their  public  road  mileage  improved.  Seven  of  these  were  west 
and  twenty-four  were  east  of  the  Blue  Ridge.  Five  mountain 
counties  are  among  the  forty  counties  that  made  the  best  show- 
ing in  the  State  in  improved  public  road  mileage  in  1914. 
Avery,  a  mountain  county  with  no  improved  roads  in  the  last 


THE  OLD  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEW  63 

report,  is  now  spending  $150,000  in  road  construction.  Our 
mountain  counties  are  falling  into  line  about  as  rapidly  as  other 
sections  of  the  State.  And  North  Carolina  is  doing  well  in  high- 
way building.  In  1914  she  stood  ahead  of  twenty-nine  states 
in  per  cent,  of  surfaced  roads,  and  outranked  thirty-two  in  the 
expenditure  of  road  funds  locally  raised. 

5.  As  a  last  word  in  my  attempt  to  show  that  our  mountain 
conditions  and  problems  are  state-wide  conditions  and  prob- 
lems, let  us  consider  the  investment  made  by  our  Highlanders  in 
their  schools  and  children;  say,  their  per  capita  investment  in 
country  school  property  in  the  census  year.  In  1910  it  was  only 
$1.86  per  rural  inhabitant.  But  then,  it  was  only  $2.08  the  whole 
State  over.  Seven  mountain  counties  were  well  above  the  state 
average  with  per  capita  investments  ranging  from  $2.56  in 
Swain,  one  of  the  three  poorest  counties  in  the  State,  to  $4.56  in 
Transylvania. 

Our  mountain  counties  are  moving  forward  in  rural  school 
property  about  as  rapidly  as  the  rest  of  the  State.  Between 
1900  and  1914  the  value  of  such  property  in  seventeen  highland 
counties  rose  from  $408,000  to  $637,000,  an  increase  of  56  per 
cent.,  against  an  increase  of  45  per  cent,  in  the  State  at  large. 
Ashe  and  Yancey  more  than  doubled  their  investments  in  rural 
school  property  during  these  four  years.  In  Cherokee  the  in- 
vestment was  more  than  trebled.  And  it  is  proper  to  add  that 
under  the  superb  leadership  of  Hon.  J.  Y.  Joyner,  the  State 
School  Superintendent,  our  State  as  a  whole  has  made  mar- 
velous gains  during  the  last  ten  years  in  the  education  of  all  our 
people.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  these  gains  make  a  story  of  un- 
paralleled achievement. 

The  mountain  people  I  know  are  democratic  by  nature,  high 
spirited,  self-reliant,  and  proudly  independent.  They  scorn 
charities,  and  scent  patronage  afar.  They  are  not  a  weakling 
people.  They  are  sturdy  and  strong  in  character,  keenly  respon- 
sive to  fair  treatment,  kind  hearted  and  loyal  to  friends,  quick 
to  lend  help  in  distress;  and  salted  unto  salvation  by  a  keen 
sense  of  humor. 

They  are  not  a  submerged  race.  They  are  not  down  and  out, 
after  a  hand  to  hand  struggle  with  advancing  civilization.  They 
are  not  victims  of  social  mal-adjustment.  They  are,  as  yet,  the 


64  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

unadjusted.  They  are  not  decadents  like  the  country  people  in 
the  densely  populated  industrial  areas  of  the  North  and  East. 
They  are  a  coming,  not  a  vanishing  race.  Their  thews  and 
sinews  are  strong,  their  brains  are  nimble  and  capable,  and  at 
bottom  they  are  sane  and  sound,  healthsome  and  wholesome,  in 
wind  and  limb,  body  and  soul.  They  are  a  hopeful  element  in 
developing  democracy  in  North  Carolina.  There  is  immense 
lifting  power  in  the  people  of  our  hill  country.  They  need,  to 
be  sure,  to  be  organized  for  economic,  civic,  and  social  efficiency ; 
but  this  need  is  state-wide,  not  merely  regional. 

The  Highlanders  have  long  been  a  segregated,  unmixed  ethnic 
group — a  homogeneous  mass  without  organic  unity.  Miss 
Emma  Miles,  herself  a  mountaineer,  says  in  "The  Spirit  of  the 
Mountains,"  " There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  community  of  moun- 
taineers. Our  people  are  almost  incapable  of  concerted  action. 
We  are  a  people  yet  asleep,  a  race  without  consciousness  of  its 
own  existence."  All  of  which  means  that  here  is  a  social  mass 
that  lacks  social  solidarity.  It  lacks  the  unity  in  variety  and 
the  variety  in  unity  that  social  development  demands  in  any 
group  of  people. 

A  fundamental  need  .in  the  mountains  is  an  influx  of  new 
people  with  new  ideas  and  enterprises.  The  homogeneity  of  our 
Highlanders  has  long  been  a  liability,  not  an  asset.  Appalachia 
needs  the  mingling  of  race  types.  The  English  Midlands  offer 
an  illustration  in  point.  Here  is  where  the  Cymric,  Pictish,  and 
Irish  tribes  of  Celts  struggled  for  long  centuries  with  the  Anglo- 
Saxons,  Danes,  and  Scandinavians.  Here  they  finally  coalesced, 
and  here  is  the  seed-bed  of  national  supremacy  in  intellect. 
Here  is  the  England  of  Shakespeare,  Macaulay,  Ruskin,  and 
George  Eliot,  Hogarth,  Turner  and  Burne- Jones,  Watt,  Hamil- 
ton, and  Farraday. 

But  a  new  era  is  at  hand  in  our  hill  country.  Industrialism 
is  rapidly  invading  and  occupying  this  region.  The  timber,  min- 
eral, and  water  power  treasures  of  the  mountains  have  at  last 
challenged  the  attention  of  organized  big  business.  The  blare 
of  steam  whistles,  the  boom  of  dynamite,  the  whir  of  machinery, 
the  miracle  of  electric  lights  and  telephones,  the  bustle  of  busi- 
ness in  growing  cities  announce  an  economic  revolution  in  our 
mountain  country.  Industrial  enterprises  will  introduce  the 


THE  OLD  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEW  65 

needed  elements  of  population.  They  demand  railway  connec- 
tions with  the  outside  world.  Automobiles  in  increasing  num- 
bers demand  improved  public  highways.  This  economic  revolu- 
tion will  mean  better  schools,  stronger  newspapers,  another  type 
of  religious  consciousness,  and  a  more  liberal  social  life.  The 
industrial  transformation  of  Appalachia  has  begun,  and  the 
next  generation  of  Highlanders  will  be  well  in  the  middle  of  this 
new  era. 

We  ought  to  keep  clearly  in  mind  a  concern  of  primary  im- 
portance to  the  mountain  people.  The  question,  says  President 
Frost,  is  whether  the  mountain  people  can  be  enlightened  and 
guided  so  that  they  can  have  a  part  in  the  development  of  their 
own  country,  or  whether  they  must  give  place  to  aliens  and 
melt  away  like  the  Indians  of  an  earlier  day. 

That  is  to  say,  both  the  church  and  the  school  problems  are 
fundamentally  economic  and  social.  The  highest  values,  of 
course,  are  spiritual.  As  invading  industrialism  turns  into  gold 
the  natural  resources  of  these  mountains,  will  it  enhance  the 
value  of  their  largest  asset — the  men  and  women  of  the  hill 
country  ? 


THE  RURAL  NEGRO  AND  THE  SOUTH  * 

BOOKER  T.    WASHINGTON 

OF  the  nine  million  Negroes,  or  nearly  that  number,  in  the 
South,  about  seven  million  are  in  the  rural  districts.  They  are 
on  the  farm,  the  plantation,  and  in  the  small  town.  They  in- 
clude 80  per  cent,  of  the  whole  Negro  population  in  the  South, 
the  great  bulk  of  the  Negro  population  in  America,  in  fact.  Of 
this  seven  million  it  is  safe  to  say  that  2,200,000  persons  are 
actually  working,  either  as  hired  hands,  tenant  farmers,  crop- 
pers, or  renters  and  independent  owners,  upon  the  land.  This 
number  includes  women  and  children,  for,  on  the  farm  and  the 
plantation,  the  unit  of  labor  is  not  the  individual  but  the  fam- 
ily, and  in  the  South  to-day  Negro  women  still  do  a  large  part 
of  the  work  in  the  fields. 

i  Adapted  from  "Proceedings  of  the  National  Conference  of  Charities 
and  Corrections,"  Memphis,  Tenn.,  May,  1014,  pp.  121-127. 


66  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

People  who  live  in  the  cotton  growing  States  know  that  a  very 
large  part  of  the  business  of  those  states  is  based  on  the  Negro 
and  the  mule. 

In  the  South,  when  a  planter  wants  to  borrow  money,  he  finds 
his  credit  at  the  bank  is  usually  determined  by  the  number  of 
reliable  Negro  tenants  he  can  control ;  business  is  based  on  labor. 
In  other  words,  the  value  of  the  land  and  of  all  that  goes  with 
it  and  depends  upon  it,  is  determined  very  largely,  more  largely, 
perhaps,  than  is  true  of  any  other  part  of  the  country,  by  the 
character  and  quantity  of  the  labor  supply. 

The  two  million  and  more  Negroes  who  are  employed  in  agri- 
culture in  the  Southern  States  have  in  their  hands,  either  as 
renters  or  as  owners,  40  per  cent,  of  the  tillable  land.  Some- 
thing like  100,000,000  of  the  150,000,000  acres  of  improved  land 
is  cultivated  by  Negro  labor,  and  of  every  eleven  bales  of  cotton 
produced  in  the  South,  seven  are  raised  by  Negroes. 

The  Negro  is  here  and  he  is  likely  to  remain.  First,  because 
after  something  like  three  hundred  years  he  has  adapted  him- 
self to  the  country  and  the  people ;  because  experience  has  taught 
him  that,  on  the  whole,  the  vast  majority  of  the  Negroes  are  more 
at  home  and  better  off  in  the  agricultural  regions  of  the  South 
than  they  are  likely  to  be  in  any  other  part  of  the  world;  and 
finally  because  the  Southern  white  man  does  not  want  him  to  go 
away.  You  may  say  what  you  please  about  segregation  of  the 
races,  but  when  there  is  work  to  be  done  about  the  plantation, 
when  it  comes  time  to  plant  and  pick  the  cotton,  the  white  man 
does  not  want  the  Negro  so  far  away  that  he  cannot  reach  him 
by  the  sound  of  his  voice. 

At  the  present  time  Negroes  in  the  rural  districts  represent, 
in  some  respects,  the  best  portion  of  the  Negro  race.  They  are 
for  the  most  part  a  vigorous,  wholesome,  simple-minded  people. 
They  are,  as  yet,  almost  untouched  by  the  vices  of  city  life,  and 
still  maintain,  on  the  whole,  their  confidence  in  the  good  will  of 
the  white  people  by  whom  they  are  surrounded. 

These  seven  million  people  represent,  therefore,  tremendous 
possibilities  for  good  and  for  evil  to  themselves,  and  the  com- 
munity in  which  they  live.  From  an  economic  view  alone,  this 
large  actual  and  potential  labor  force  represents  a  vast  store  of 
undeveloped  wealth,  a  gold  mine  of  productive  energy,  in  fact. 


THE  OLD  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEW         67 

Imported  to  this  country  at  an  enormous  cost  in  suffering  and  in 
money;  trained  and  disciplined  during  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years  of  slavery,  and  now  waiting  to  be  developed,  under  the  in- 
fluences of  free  institutions,  the  Negro  is  one  of  the  great  nat- 
ural resources  of  this  southern  community.  This  being  so,  the 
prosperity  of  the  South  is  very  largely  bound  up  with  the  latent 
possibilities  of  the  Negro.  Just  in  proportion  as  he  becomes  an 
efficient  farmer  and  a  dependable  laborer,  just  to  that  extent 
will  the  whole  country  move  forward  and  prosperity  be  multi- 
plied. 

If  Negro  labor  is  to  become  more  efficient,  every  effort  should 
be  made  to  encourage  rather  than  to  discourage  the  Negro  in  his 
ambition  to  go  forward,  to  buy  land  and  plant  himself  perma- 
nently on  the  soil.  In  the  long  run  the  planter  will  not  suffer 
from  the  existence  in  his  neighborhood  of  Negro  farmers  who 
offer  an  example  of  thrift  and  industry  to  their  neighbors.  For 
example,  Macon  County,  in  which  I  live,  was  the  only  one  of 
the  Black  Belt  counties  of  Alabama  which  showed  an  increase 
of  Negro  population  in  the  decade  from  1900  to  1910.  The  rea- 
son was  that  a  special  effort  had  been  made  in  that  county  to 
improve  the  public  schools  and  this  brought  into  the  county  a 
large  number  of  progressive  farmers  who  were  anxious  to  own 
homes  in  the  neighborhood  of  a  good  school. 

G.  W.  McLeod,  who  owns  a  large  tract  of  land  in  Macon 
County,  Alabama,  is  a  good  example  of  the  white  planter  who 
treats  his  tenants  well.  Mr.  McLeod  believes  in  having  a  good 
school  in  the  community,  so  he  gave  an  acre  of  ground  upon 
which  the  school  house  was  built  and  $100  in  addition  to  help 
put  up  the  $700  school  house.  He  deeded  the  land  to  a  set  of 
colored  trustees.  Mr.  McLeod  also  offers  annual  prizes  for  the 
best  kept  stock,  best  kept  houses,  best  cared  for  children,  best 
attendance  at  Sunday  school  and  church.  The  man  or  woman 
guilty  of  taking  intoxicating  liquors  or  engaging  in  family  quar- 
rels is  not  eligible  to  prizes  and  must  go  at  the  end  of  the 
year. 

Mr.  McLeod  by  this  method  of  dealing  with  his  tenants  has 
little  if  any  trouble  in  finding  profitable  tenants  for  his  lands. 
Not  only  does  he  find  that  this  policy  pays  in  cash,  but  he  has 
the  satisfaction  of  seeing  around  him  people  who  are  prosperous 


68  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

and  contented,  who  are  every  year  making  progress,  who  are 
growing  in  intelligence,  ambition  and  the  knowledge  of  all  those 
things  which  make  life  worth  living. 

From  direct  investigation  I  find  that  many  valuable  colored 
laborers  leave  the  farm  for  the  reason  that  they  seldom  see  or 
handle  cash.  The  Negro  laborer  likes  to  put  his  hands  on  real 
money  as  often  as  possible.  In  the  cit3r,  while  he  is  not  so  well 
off  in  the  long  run,  as  I  have  said,  he  is  usually  paid  off  in  cash 
every  Saturday  night.  In  the  country  he  seldom  gets  cash 
oftener  than  once  a  month,  or  once  a  year.  Not  a  few  of  the 
best  colored  laborers  leave  the  farms  because  of  the  poor  houses 
furnished  by  the  owners.  The  condition  of  some  of  the  one- 
room  cabins  is  miserable  almost  beyond  description.  In  the 
towns  and  cities,  while  he  may  have  a  harder  time  in  other  re- 
spects, the  colored  man  can  usually  find  a  reasonably  comfortable 
house  with  two  or  three  rooms. 

No  matter  how  ignorant  a  colored  man  may  be  himself,  he  al- 
most always  wants  his  children  to  have  education.  A  very  large 
number  of  colored  laborers  leave  the  farm  because  they  can  not 
get  an  education  for  their  children.  In  a  large  section  of  the 
farming  district  of  the  South,  Negro  schools  run  only  from  two 
to  five  months  in  the  year.  In  many  cases  children  have  to 
walk  miles  to  reach  these  schools.  The  school  houses  are,  in 
most  cases,  wretched  little  hovels  with  no  light  or  warmth  or 
comfort  of  any  kind.  The  teacher  receives  perhaps  not  more 
than  $18  or  $25  a  month,  and  as  every  school  superintendent 
knows,  poor  pay  means  a  poor  teacher. 

In  saying  this,  I  do  not  overlook  the  fact  that  conditions  are 
changing  for  the  better  in  all  parts  of  the  South.  White  people 
are  manifesting  more  interest  each  year  in  the  training  of  col- 
ored people,  and  what  is  equally  important,  colored  people  are 
beginning  to  learn  to  use  their  education  in  sensible  ways ;  they 
are  learning  that  it  is  no  disgrace  for  an  educated  person  to 
work  on  the  farm.  They  are  learning  that  education  which  does 
not  somehow  touch  life  is  not  education  at  all.  More  and  more 
we  are  all  learning  that  the  school  is  not  simply  a  place,  where 
boys  and  girls  learn  to  read  and  cipher ;  but  a  place  where  they 
learn  to  live.  We  are  all  learning  that  education  which  does 
not  somehow  or  other  improve  the  farm  and  the  home,  which 


THE  OLD  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEW  69 

does  not  make  a  return  to  the  community  in  some  form  or  other, 
has  no  justification  for  its  existence. 

The  possibilities  of  the  Negro  farmer  are  indicated  by  the 
progress  that  he  has  made  in  fifty  years.  In  1863  there  were 
in  all  the  United  States  only  a  few  farms  owned  by  Negroes. 
They  now  (1910)  operate  in  the  South  890,140  farms  which  are 
217,800  more  than  there  were  in  this  section  in  1863. 

Negro  farm  laborers  and  Negro  farmers  in  the  South  now 
cultivate  approximately  100,000,000  acres  of  land,  of  which  42,- 
500,000  acres  are  under  the  control  of  Negro  farmers.  The  in- 
crease of  Negro  farm  owners  in  the  past  fifty  years  compares 
favorably  with  the  increase  of  white  farm  owners.  The  Negroes 
of  this  country  now  own  20,000,000  acres  or  31,000  square  miles 
of  land.  If  all  the  land  they  own  were  placed  in  one  body,  its 
area  would  be  greater  than  that  of  the  state  of  South  Carolina. 

The  Negro  has  made  his  greatest  progress  in  agriculture  dur- 
ing the  past  ten  years.  Prom  1900  to  1910  the  total  value  of 
farm  property  owned  by  the  colored  farmers  of  the  South  in- 
creased from  $177,404,688  to  $492,898,218,  or  177  per  cent. 

In  view  of  all  this  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  the  part  of  wisdom 
to  take  hold  of  this  problem  in  a  broad,  statesmanlike  way.  In- 
stead of  striving  to  keep  the  Negro  down,  we  should  devote  the 
time  and  money  and  effort  that  is  now  used  for  the  purpose  of 
punishing  the  Negro  for  crimes, — committed  in  many  instances 
because  he  has  been  neglected  and  allowed  to  grow  up  in  ig- 
norance without  ambition  and  without  hope — and  use  it  for  the 
purpose  of  making  the  Negro  a  better  and  more  useful  citizen. 


FOLLOWING  THE  COLOR  LINE  1 

RAY   STANNARD   BAKER 

GENERALLY  speaking,  the  sharpest  race  prejudice  in  the  South 
is  exhibited  by  the  poorer -class  of  white  people,  whether  far- 
mers, artisans  or  unskilled  workers,  who  come  into  active  com- 
petition with  the  Negroes,  or  from  politicians  who  are  seeking 

i  Adapted  from  "Following  the  Color  Line,"  American  Magazine,  64: 
381-393,  July,  1907. 


70  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  votes  of  this  class  of  people.  It'  is  this  element  which  has 
driven  the  Negroes  out  of  more  than  one  community  in  the 
South  and  it  commonly  forms  the  lynching  mobs.  A  similar  an- 
tagonism of  the  working  classes  exists  in  the  North  wherever  the 
Negro  has  appeared  in  large  numbers. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  larger  land  owners  and  employers  of 
the  South,  and  all  professional  and  business  men  who  hire 
servants,  while  they  dislike  and  fear  the  Negro  as  a  race  (though 
often  loving  and  protecting  individual  Negroes),  want  the  black 
man  to  work  for  them.  More  than  that,  they  must  have  him: 
for  he  has  a  practical  monopoly  on  labor  in  the  South.  White 
men  of  the  employing  class  will  do  almost  anything  to  keep  the 
Negro  on  the  land  and  his  wife  in  the  kitchen — so  long  as  they 
are  obedient  and  unambitious  workers. 

But  I  had  not  been  very  long  in  the  black  belt  before  I  began 
to  see  that  the  large  planters — the  big  employers  of  labor — often 
pursued  very  different  methods  in  dealing  with  the  Negro.  In 
the  feudal  Middle  Ages  there  were  good  and  bad  barons;  so  in 
the  South  to-day  there  are  "good"  and  "bad"  landlords  (for 
lack  of  better  designation)  and  every  gradation  between  them. 

The  good  landlord,  generally  speaking,  is  the  one  who  knows 
by  inheritance  how  a  feudal  system  should  be  operated.  In 
other  words,  he  is  the  old  slave-owner  or  his  descendant,  who 
not  only  feels  the  ancient  responsibility  of  slavery  times,  but 
believes  that  the  good  treatment  of  tenants,  as  a  policy,  will 
produce  better  results  than  harshness  and  force. 

The  bad  landlord  represents  the  degeneration  of  the  feudal 
system:  he  is  in  farming  to  make  all  he  can  out  of  it  this  year 
and  next,  without  reference  to  human  life. 

Conditions  in  the  black  belt  are  in  one  respect  much  as  they 
were  in  slavery  times,  or  as  they  would  be  under  any  feudal 
system :  if  the  master  or  lord  is  * '  good, ' '  the  Negro  prospers ; 
if  he  is  harsh,  grasping,  unkind,  the  Negro  suffers  bitterly.  It 
gets  back  finally  to  the  white  man.  In  assuming  supreme  rights 
in  the  South,  political  and  industrial,  the  white  man  also  as- 
sumes tremendous  duties  and  responsibilities ;  he  cannot  have  the 
one  without  the  other ;  and  he  takes  to  himself  the  pain  and  suf- 
fering which  goes  with  power  and  responsibility. 

Of  course,  scarcity  of  labor  and  high  wages  have  given  the 


THE  OLD  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEW  71 

really  ambitious  and  industrious  Negro  his  opportunity,  and 
many  thousands  of  them  are  becoming  more  and  more  inde- 
pendent of  the  favor  or  the  ill-will  of  the  whites.  And  therein 
lies  a  profound  danger,  not  only  to  the  Negro,  but  to  the  South. 
Gradually  losing  the  support  and  advice  of  the  best  type  of 
white  man,  the  independent  Negro  finds  himself  in  competition 
with  the  poorer  types  of  white  man,  whose  jealousy  he  must  meet. 
He  takes  the  penalties  of  being  really  free.  Escaping  the  exac- 
tions of  a  feudal  life,  he  finds  he  must  meet  the  sharper  diffi- 
culties of  a  free  industrial  system.  And  being  without  the  po- 
litical rights  of  his  poor  white  competitor  and  wholly  without 
social  recognition,  discredited  by  the  bestial  crimes  of  the  lower 
class  of  his  own  race,  he  has,  indeed,  a  hard  struggle  before  him. 
In  many  neighborhoods  he  is  peculiarly  at  the  mercy  of  this 
lower  class  white  electorate,  and  the  self-seeking  politicians 
whose  stock  in  trade  consists  in  playing  upon  the  passions  of 
race-hatred. 

When  the  Negro  tenant  takes  up  land  or  hires  out  to  the 
landlord,  he  ordinarily  signs  a  contract,  or  if  he  cannot  sign 
(about  half  the  Negro  tenants  of  the  black  belt  are  wholly 
illiterate)  he  makes  his  mark.  He  often  has  no  way  of  know- 
ing certainly  what  is  in  the  contract,  though  the  arrangement  is 
usually  clearly  understood,  and  he  must  depend  on  the  landlord 
to  keep  both  the  rent  and  the  supply-store  accounts.  In  other 
words,  he  is  wholly  at  the  planter's  mercy — a  temptation  as  dan- 
gerous for  the  landlord  as  the  possibilities  which  it  presents  are 
for  the  tenant.  It  is  so  easy  to  make  large  profits  by  charging 
immense  interest  percentages  or  outrageous  prices  for  supplies 
to  tenants  who  are  too  ignorant  or  too  weak  to  protect  them- 
selves, that  the  stories  of  the  oppressive  landlord  in  the  South 
are  scarcely  surprising.  It  is  easy,  when  the  tenant  brings  in 
his  cotton  in  the  fall  not  only  to  underweigh  it,  but  to  credit  it 
at  the  lowest  prices  of  the  week ;  and  this  dealing  of  the  strong 
with  the  weak  is  not  Southern,  it  is  human.  Such  a  system  has 
encouraged  dishonesty,  and  wastefulness ;  it  has  made  many  land- 
lords cruel  and  greedy,  it  has  increased  the  helplessness,  hope- 
lessness and  shiftlessness  of  the  Negro.  In  many  cases  it  has 
meant  downright  degeneration,  not  only  to  the  Negro,  but  to 
the  white  man.  These  are  strong  words,  but  no  one  can  travel 


72  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

in  the  black  belt  without  seeing  enough  to  convince  him  of  the 
terrible  consequences  growing  out  of  these  relationships. 

I  made  inquiries  as  to  why  the  Negroes  wanted  to  leave  the 
farms  and  go  to  cities.  The  answer  I  got  from  all  sorts  of  sources 
was,  first,  the  lack  of  schooling  in  the  country;  and,  second,  the 
lack  of  protection. 

And  I  heard  also  many  stories  of  ill-treatment  of  various 
sorts,  the  distrust  of  the  tenant  of  the  landlord  in  keeping  his 
accounts — all  of  which,  dimly  recognized,  tends  to  make  many 
Negroes  escape  the  country,  if  they  can.  Indeed,  it  is  growing 
harder  and  harder  on  the  great  plantations,  especially  where  the 
management  is  by  overseers,  to  keep  a  sufficient  labor  supply. 
In  some  places  the  white  landlords  have  begun  to  break  up  their 
plantations,  selling  small  farms  to  ambitious  Negroes — a  signifi- 
cant sign,  indeed,  of  the  passing  of  the  feudal  system.  Comment- 
ing on  this  tendency,  the  Thomaston  Post  says : 

"This  is,  in  part,  a  solution  of  the  so-called  Negro  problem, 
for  those  of  the  race  who  have  property  interests  at  stake  cannot 
afford  to  antagonize  their  white  neighbors  or  transgress  the 
laws.  The  ownership  of  land  tends  to  make  them  better  citi- 
zens in  every  way,  more  thoughtful  of  the  rights  of  others,  and 
more  ambitious  for  their  own  advancement.  The  tendency  to- 
wards cutting  up  the  large  plantations  is  beginning  to  show 
itself,  and  when  all  of  them  are  so  divided,  there  will  be  no 
agricultural  labor  problem,  except,  perhaps,  in  the  gathering 
of  an  especially  large  crop." 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

THE  SOUTH 

Branson,  E.  C.  Farm  Life  Conditions  in  the  South.  Chapel  Hill, 
N.  C.  The  Church  as  a  Country  Life  Defense. 

Branson,  E.  C.  Rural  Life  in  the  South.  Am.  Statistical  Ass'n.,  Pub. 
13:71-75,  March,  1912. 

Brooks,  Robert  P.  The  Agrarian  Revolution  in  Georgia,  1865-1912. 
Univ.  Wis.,  Madison,  Hist.  Series,  Vol.  3,  No.  3. 

Bruce,  P.  A.  Economic  History  of  Virginia,  in  the  Seventeenth  Cen- 
tury. Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1896. 

Bruce,  P.  A.  The  Rise  of  the  New  South.  Barrie,  Philadelphia.  The 
Hist,  of  North  America,  V.  17,  1905. 

Bogart,  E.  L.  The  Economic  History  of  the  United  States.  Long- 
mans, N.  Y.,  1907. 

Cable,  George  W.     Old  Creole  Days.     Scribner,  N.  Y.,  1907. 

Cable,  George  W.     The  Creoles  of  Louisiana.     Scribner,  N.  Y.,  1884. 


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Coulter,  John  Lee.  The  Rural  South.  Am.  Statistical  Ass'n.,  13 :  45- 
58,  March,  1912. 

DuBois,  W.  E.  The  Rural  South.  Am.  Statistical  Ass'n.,  13:80-4, 
March,  1912. 

Dunning,  W.  A.  Essays  on  the  Civil  War  and  Reconstruction.  Mac- 
millan,  N.  Y.,  1898. 

Dyer,  G.  W.  Southern  Problems  that  Challenge  our  Thought.  South- 
ern Sociological  Congress  Proceedings,  pp.  25-37,  Nashville,  Tenn., 
1912. 

Frissell,  H.  B.  Southern  Agriculture  and  the  Negro  Farmer.  Am. 
Statistical  Ass'n.,  13 :  65-70,  March,  1912. 

Glasson,  Wm.  H.  Rural  Conditions  in  the  South.  Am.  Statistical 
Ass'n.,  13:  76-79,  March,  1912. 

Gray,  Lewis.  Southern  Agriculture,  Plantation  System  and  the  Negro 
^Problem.  Annals,  40 :  90-99,  March,  1912. 

Hale,  Louise  Closser.  We  Discover  the  Old  Dominion.  Dodd,  N.  Y., 
1916. 

Haney,  Lewis  H.,  and  Wehrwein,  George  S.  A  Social  and  Economic 
Survey  of  Southern  Travis  County.  Univ.  of  Texas  Bui.,  65,  Aus- 
tin, 1916. 

MacClintock,  S.  S.  The  Kentucky  Mountains  and  Their  Feuds. 
Amer.  Jour,  of  Soc.,  7:171-187.  September,  1901. 

Page,  Walter  H.  Journey  Through  the  Southern  States.  World's 
Work,  14 :  9003-9028,  June,  1907. 

Kephart,  Horace.  Our  Southern  Highlanders.  Macmillan,  N.  Y., 
1913. 

Olmstead,  Frederick  L.     The  Cotton  Kingdom.     Mason,  N.  Y.,  1862. 

Olmstead,  Frederick  L.  Journey  in  the  Seaboard  Slave  States.  Put- 
nam, N.  Y.,  1904. 

Page,  Thomas  Nelson.     Red  Rock.    'Scribner,  N.  Y.,  1898. 

Southern  Agriculture,  its  Conditions  and  Needs.  Pop.  Sci.  Mo.,  64: 
245-261,  January,  1904. 

Southern  Soc.  Congress.     Proceedings.     Nashville,  Tenn. 

Stone,  A.  H.  Studies  in  the  American  Race  Problem.  Doubleday, 
Garden  City,  1908. 

Vincent,  George  E.  A  Retarded  Frontier.  Amer.  Journal  Sociology, 
4:1-20,  July,  1898. 

Waldo,  Frank.  Among  the  Southern  Appalachians.  New  England 
Mag.,  14:231-247,  n.  s.,  May,  1901. 

THE  NEGRO 

Baker,  Ray  Stannard.  Following  the  Color  Line.  Doubleday,  Page 
&  Co.,  Garden  City,  1908. 

Commons,  John  R.  Races  and  Immigrants  in  America.  The  Macmil- 
lan Company,  N.  Y.,  1908. 

DuBois,  W.  E.  B.  The  Souls  of  Black  Folk.  A.  C.  McClurg  &  Co., 
Chicago,  1907. 

Douglass,  H.  Paul.  Christian  Reconstruction  in  the  South.  The  Pil- 
grim Press,  Boston,  1909. 

Dunbar,  Paul  Laurence.  Lyrics  of  Lowly  Life.  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co., 
N.  Y.,  1896. 


74  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Hart,  Albert  Bushnell.     The  Southern  South.     Appleton,  N.  Y.,  1910. 

Haynes,  George  Edmund.  The  Negro  at  Work  in  New  York  City,  a 
Study  in  Economic  Progress.  Columbia  Univ.  Studies  in  History, 
Economics,  and  Public  Law,  Vol.  49,  No.  3  (Whole  No.  124),  N.  Y., 
1912. 

Horwill,   Herbert  W.     Negro  Exodus.     Contemporary   Review,   114: 
299-305,  Sept.,  1918. 

Miller,  Kelly.  The  Negro's  Part  in  Racial  Cooperation  in  the  Com- 
munity. Conf.  Social  Work,  1918,  pp.  481-85. 

Negro  Education.  U.  S.  Bur.  of  Ed.  Bui.,  1916,  Nos.  38  and  39,  Vols. 
I  and  II. 

Negro  Migration  in  1916-17.  Bui.  U.  S.  Dept.  of  Labor,  Div.  of  Negro 
Economics,  Gov't.  Printing  Of.,  Washington,  1919. 

Negro  Rural  School  and  its  Relation  to  the  Community.  The  Extension 
Department,  Tuskegee  Normal  and  Industrial  Institute,  Tuskegee, 
Ala.,  1915. 

Wolfe,  Albert  B.  The  Negro  Problem  in  the  United  States.  In  Read- 
ings in  Social  Problems,  Book  V.  Grim  &  Co.,  Boston,  1916. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  IMMIGRANT  IN  AGRICULTURE 
IMMIGRATION  .IN  AGRICULTURE1 

JOHN   OLSEN 

AT  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  United  States 
found  itself  in  possession  of  vast  undeveloped  resources,  which 
were  tremendously  increased  by  successful  purchases  and  an- 
nexations in  the  course  of  the  century.  To  secure  the  rapid  de- 
velopment of  these  resources  the  government  not  only  threw 
them  open  to  unrestricted  development  by  private  enterprise 
but  even  encouraged  such  development  by  public  assistance.  As 
a  result  of  such  a  policy  public  lands  of  apparently  unlimited 
extent  and  enormous  fertility  were  offered  to  any  one  at  a 
nominal  expense.  Later  the  land  acts  were  multiplied  so  that 
any  individual  could  obtain  480  acres  of  virgin  territory.  Fur- 
thermore this  policy  of  encouraging  private  enterprise  led  to 
the  extension  of  the  means  of  communication  so  that  these  not 
only  accompanied  but  in  many  cases  preceded  the  growth  of 
the  settlement.  Thus  access  to  the  splendid  public  demesne  was 
assured. 

The  temptation  to  enter  premises  so  promising  could  not  be 
suppressed  by  the  unfavorable  attitude  at  first  assumed  by  for- 
eign governments.  Consequently  a  steady  stream  of  immigrants 
commenced  flowing  into  this  country.  Even  though  separated 
by  political  boundaries  the  English,  Scotch,  Welsh,  and  Irish 
still  felt  that  the  states  were  peculiarly  their  own.  Soon  the 
wanderlust  of  the  Germans,  the  Danes,  the  Swedes,  and  the  Nor- 
wegians led  them  to  the  same  destination.  There  were  also  some 
Swiss  and  Dutch  and  a  few  from  southern  and  eastern  Europe 
in  this  first  wave  which  we  shall  designate  the  Old  Immigration. 

i  Adapted  from  a  paper  prepared  by  a  graduate  student  in  the  Editor's 
Class  in  the  University  of  Minnesota,  summer  1917. 

75 


76  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Of  the  motives  which  actuated  this  immigration,  the  religious 
and  political,  which  had  been  very  important,  were  rapidly 
diminishing  in  influence.  In  general,  hard  times  in  their  own 
country  due  to  crop  failures  and  fluctuations  in  industry  pre- 
ceded the  great  waves  of  emigrants.  This  statement  applies  prin- 
cipally to  Ireland  and  Scandinavia  although  there  were  serious 
crop  failures  in  Germany,  for  example  the  one  in  Baden  in  1825. 
The  famines  in  Ireland,  however,  surpassed  all.  The  first  one 
occurred  in  1826.  Far  more  serious  was  the  one  due  to  potato 
rot  in  1846-7.  As  a  result  emigration  and  death  reduced  the 
population  50  per  cent. 

At  the  same  time  the  general  prosperity,  which,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  brief  periods  designated  as  panics,  continued  unin- 
terruptedly throughout  the  century  in  this  country,  presented 
an  attractive  antithesis.  The  liberality  of  our  land  laws  invited 
any  foreigner  to  become  a  partaker  of  our  prosperity  since  they 
afforded  him  the  opportunity  either  of  securing  a  farm  of  his 
own  or  of  employment  at  good  wages.  The  tariff,  the  invention 
of  new  machinery,  and  the  rapid  development  of  new  industries 
were  auxiliary  forces  tending  at  least  temporarily  to  the  better- 
ment of  the  conditions  of  the  laborers.  The  increasing  facili- 
ties of  communication  enabled  the  foreigner  to  compare  the  op- 
portunities of  the  New  World  with  those  of  the  Old.  Advertis- 
ing campaigns  by  the  states  and  especially  by  private  enterprises, 
such  as  steamship  companies,  railways,  and  other  American  in- 
dustrial organizations,  which  previous  to  the  passage  of  the 
Anti-Contract  Immigration  Law  were  absolutely  unrestricted, 
tended  to  create  a  favorable  impression.  Most  influential  of 
all  were  letters  from  countrymen  already  in  America. 

Of  course  there  were  also  a  number  of  other  auxiliary  causes. 
Such  were  the  improved  facilities  of  reaching  our  country,  the 
financial  assistance  which  foreigners  settled  here  could  render 
in  enabling  relatives  to  come,  and  the  dread  caused  by  wars  and 
epidemics  in  the  densely  populated  communities  of  Europe. 
Back  of  all  these,  however,  lay  the  prime  psychological  instinct 
which  has  been  back  of  all  Teutonic  migrations  in  historical 
times,  the  desire  for  -adventure — the  Teutonic  wanderlust. 

Of  these  immigrants  a  relatively  large  percentage  engaged  in 
agriculture.  Of  the  total  number  of  males  of  foreign  origin 


THE  IMMIGRANT  77 

about  30  per  cent,  belong  to  the  English-speaking  races.  They 
are  distributed  fairly  equitably  throughout  the  North  Central, 
Eastern,  and  Western  states  although  their  main  strength  is  in 
the  first  group.  This  distribution  is  also  true  of  the  Germans. 
They  are  the  most  important  people  belonging  to  this  group, 
including  775,175  males  or  28  per  cent,  out  of  a  total  of  2,- 
105,766.  In  direct  contrast  are  the  Scandinavians,  of  whom  a 
far  greater  percentage,  44  per  cent,  of  the  Danes  and  50  per 
cent,  of  the  Norwegians,  are  engaged  in  agriculture.  Although 
found  throughout  all  of  the  above-mentioned  sections,  by  far  the 
greatest  percentage  of  those  engaged  in  agriculture  are  found 
in  the  North  Central  states.  This  concentration  is  most  marked 
in  the  case  of  the  Norwegians,  of  whom  97  per  cent,  of  those  in 
agriculture  are  found  in  that  section  and  Washington.  Their 
total  number  is  only  140,000.  Nevertheless  by  further  concen- 
tration in  Wisconsin,  Minnesota,  North  Dakota,  South  Dakota, 
Illinois,  and  Iowa  within  the  North  Central  section  they  trans- 
form those  states  into  a  veritable  Norway  in  America.  The 
Danes,  on  the  other  hand,  scatter  so  that  it  is  difficult  to  point 
out  a  single  large  and  well-defined  Danish  settlement,  while  the 
Swedes  may  be  termed  the  compromisers,  neither  scattering  as 
much  as  the  Danes  nor  concentrating  as  much  as  the  Nor- 
wegians. These  settlers  were  further  reinforced  by  a  few  Ice- 
landers. The  natives  assumed  a  by  no  means  favorable  attitude 
towards  those  who  were  entering  into  competition  with  them; 
but  the  newcomers  were  on  a  quest  for  homes  which  nothing 
except  absolute  prohibition  could  prevent.  In  this  search  the 
similarity  of  conditions  in  the  various  sections  of  America  to 
those  of  their  former  habitats  was  their  principal  guide.  Thus 
the  Germans  selected  the  timber  lands  of  the  Northwest;  the 
Norwegians  the  rough  and  hilly  lands;  the  Irish  the  well-wa- 
tered meadows.  This  conception  that  agriculture  in  America 
must  necessarily  resemble  their  own  in  Europe  was  not  always 
fortunate.  Since  agricultural  conditions  in  Ireland  were 
wretched,  it  deterred  a  large  number  of  the  Irish  from  going 
on  the  land.  As  a  result  only  354  out  of  every  10,000  Irish 
own  farm  homes  while  611  of  the  Germans,  717  of  the  Scan- 
dinavians, and  721  of  the  British  do.  The  immigrants  were,  of 
course,  influenced  by  other  considerations  also.  Some  had 


78  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

friends  or  relatives  in  certain  localities.  Industrious  land  agents 
were  always  portraying  the  splendid  advantages  of  the  sections 
in  which  they  were  interested.  The  building  of  the  railways 
facilitated  immigration  both  by  providing  better  markets  and 
also  by  familiarizing  laborers  with  the  conditions  in  the  unset- 
tled sections.  Sometimes  events  which  ought  to  be  condemned 
had  fortunate  results.  During  the  canal  mania  Illinois  became 
virtually  bankrupt.  As  a  result  it  paid  its  Irish  laborers  with 
so-called  canal  scrip.  The  only  thing  for  which  this  was  ac- 
ceptable was  land.  Consequently  a  number  of  the  Irish  invested 
in  land  and  became  permanent  settlers. 

The  presence  of  the  Negro  in  the  South  caused  the  foreigners 
to  avoid  that  section.  It  is  only  in  recent  years  that  the  in- 
creasing demand  for  labor  in  order  that  the  South  may  develop 
its  resources  has  met  with  any  distinct  response.  Of  those  that 
are  testing  the  possible  opportunities  there  the  Swedes,  Germans, 
and  Irish  are  foremost.  The  exhaustion  of  the  public  demesne 
forces  the  immigrants  into  such  new  channels.  Thus  the  neg- 
lected and  abandoned  lands  of  the  Middle  Atlantic  and  New  Eng- 
land states  are  now  being  put  into  cultivation.  Among  those 
who  utilize  this  opportunity  the  Irish,  Swedes,  Finns,  Norwe- 
gians, Dutch,  Germans  and  Poles  are  the  leaders. 

The  success  of  these  settlers  has  depended  largely  on  the  type 
of  settlement  formed.  The  joint  stock  company  proved  a  failure 
in  promoting  settling.  Money-making  and  colonization  would 
not  go  together.  Communistic  enterprises  also  proved  ephem- 
eral. More  promising  were  the  religious,  philanthropic,  and 
national  enterprises,  especially  when  they  were  provided  with 
ample  funds.  In  the  case  of  the  Irish,  the  Catholic  church  tried 
to  promote  colonization.  A  priest  was  the  first  sent  so  as  to 
secure  effective  religious  services.  The  Germans  tried  to  direct 
their  emigrants  to  definite  sections  so  that  they  might  be  Ger- 
manized. In  case  the  expectation  that  the  United  States  would 
break  up  had  been  realized  those  settlements  would  then  have 
become  independent  states.  The  chief  of  these  attempts  cen- 
tered in  Wisconsin  and  Texas.  All  of  these  attempts  failed, 
principally  on  account  of  mismanagement.  Nor  was  it  advis- 
able in  the  earliest  period  for  an  immigrant  to  start  out  alone. 
Great  suffering  frequently  resulted.  The  best  plan  was  for  the 


THE  IMMIGRANT  79 

settlers  to  settle  in  groups,  but  each  one  independent  of  all  the 
others.  Germans  and  Scandinavians  often  did  this  following 
the  instructions  either  of  friends  already  settled  in  that  locality 
or  of  an  agent  sent  in  advance  to  ascertain  conditions  there. 

These  settlers  came  from  the  agricultural  sections  of  Europe. 
Consequently  their  success  depended  on  their  ability  to  adapt 
themselves  to  American  methods.  That  such  success  has  been 
attained  will  be  questioned  by  no  one  who  has  compared  the  rude 
conditions  of  the  pioneer  with  those  of  to-day.  Since  the  great 
majority  settled  in  the  North  Central  States,  they  engaged  in 
general  farming.  In  this  type  of  farming  the  Scandinavians 
and  Germans  are  leaders.  The  Danes  are  noted  for  their  suc- 
cess in  butter-making  and  dairying.  The  Scandinavians  are 
more  likely  to  waste  the  fertility  of  the  land  than  the  Germans, 
who  maintain  it  through  the  rotation  of  crops  and  the  applica- 
tion of  fertilizers.  Wisconsin  is  the  example  of  German  success 
just  as  Utah  is  of  English.  The  fortunate  choice  of  land  con- 
tributed to  German  success  while  the  Welsh  succeeded  in  spite 
of  an  unfortunate  choice.  The  success  of  the  immigrant  is  by  no 
means  confined  to  general  farming.  The  Germans  raise  grapes 
in  California  and  carry  on  truck-raising  and  dairying  in  Georgia. 
Together  with  the  Irish  they  raise  rice  and  other  southern  prod- 
ucts in  Louisiana,  Florida,  and  Alabama.  The  Scandinavians 
raise  grapes  in  Alabama  and  truck  and  fruits  in  New  Jersey. 
The  German-Russians  are  especially  successful  in  the  beet  sugar 
sections  of  Nebraska  and  the  Swiss  in  the  cheese  industry  in 
Wisconsin.  Those  w(hom  we  ought  to  praise  the  most  are  the 
Dutch  who  undertake  the  reclamation  of  our  lowlands.  The 
best  proof  of  the  superiority  of  the  foreign  to  the  native  farmer 
is  that  the  latter  is  yielding.  The  Germans  and  Irish  are  se- 
curing control  of  the  farm  lands  of  New  Jersey,  the  Scandinav- 
ians are  replacing  the  natives  in  Vermont,  the  Germans  are  re- 
placing them  in  New  York,  and  the  Poles  in  Massachusetts. 

The  desirability  of  the  immigrant  does  not,  however,  depend 
principally  on  his  ability  to  accumulate  wealth.  If  such  ac- 
cumulation is  accompanied  by  a  lowering  of  the  American 
standard  of  living,  he  is  undesirable.  Among  our  foreign  set- 
tlers we  find  the  food  simple,  the  clothes  cheap  and  coarse. 
These  features  seem  inevitable  in  a  frontier  community.  If, 


80  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

however,  they  are  retained  after  the  community  passes  the 
frontier  stage,  the  settlers  are  undesirable.  As  soon,  however,  as 
the  immigrants  from  northwestern  Europe  passed  that  stage, 
they  commenced  imitating  American  customs.  During  the 
pioneer  days  any  make-shift  for  a  house  had  to  be  satisfactory. 
Now  substantial  houses  are  found  almost  everywhere.  The 
early  settlers  had  to  work  excessively  hard  to  attain  success. 
With  the  increase  of  prosperity  they  have  ceased  to  do  this.  A 
very  influential  reason  that  the  Germans,  Scandinavians,  and 
certain  minor  groups  of  foreigners  outdistanced  the  natives  was 
that  among  the  former  the  women  and  children  did  a  great  deal 
of  outdoor  labor.  The  generation  born  in  this  country  do  not 
put  the  women  and  children  in  the  fields.  Thus  in  general  the 
earlier  immigrants  are  conforming  to  American  standards. 

Foreigners  on  the  farms  are  easily  assimilated.  The  main 
factor  against  assimilation  is  religion.  This  statement  does  not, 
of  course,  apply  to  the  English-speaking  peoples  who  belong  in 
general  to  the  same  church  as  the  natives.  Other  nationalities 
couple  their  language  very  closely  with  their  forms  of  worship. 
They  therefore  try  to  maintain  schools  in  their  own  language. 
Such  attempts  fail  because  of  the  preference  on  the  part  of  the 
young  for  the  English  schools  and  also  because  a  large  number 
of  the  older  people  realize  the  paramount  importance  of  Eng- 
lish. Attempts  were  made  by  the  conservatives  to  introduce 
their  languages  into  the  public  schools.  With  the  exception  of 
Ohio  and  Pennsylvania  where  the  Germans  succeeded  in  intro- 
ducing German  such  efforts  have  been  failures  everywhere.  In 
the  schools  these  peoples  rank  high.  In  fact  the  literacy  of  the 
Scandinavian  immigrant  has  been  higher  than  that  of  the  North- 
erners as  a  whole.  Their  inclination  is  indicated  by  the  large 
number  of  Germans  and  Scandinavians  who  engage  in  educa- 
tional work.  To  obtain  public  land  they  had  to  become  nat- 
uralized. Later  the  questions  of  local  government  naturally 
aroused  interest  in  politics.  The  English  on  account  of  their 
previous  acquaintance  with  our  political  customs  excelled.  The 
others,  however,  were  also  used  to  fairly  democratic  institutions 
so  that  they  were  not  at  such  a  great  disadvantage.  But  they 
have  been  rather  indifferent  in  this  respect  except  where  they 
have  composed  practically  the  entire  population  and  therefore 


THE  IMMIGRANT  81 

have  been  forced  to  participate.  The  Germans,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  looked  on  politics  as  a  burdensome  duty.  Many  thought 
abstinence  from  American  politics  creditable  on  account  of  the 
questionable  character  of  the  methods  employed.  The  one  ex- 
ception is  the  Norwegian.  He  is  a  natural  politician.  He  in- 
sists on  his  right  to  be  recognized,  and  where  due  recognition  is 
not  voluntarily  given  he  organizes  to  secure  it.  The  most  cred- 
itable feature  of  the  engagement  in  politics  of  any  of  these  for- 
eigners is  that  they  have  generally  worked  for  cleaner  politics. 
Although  with  the  exception  of  the  Irish  they  are  generally  Re- 
publicans, they  are  by  no  means  bound  to  the  party.  Exercis- 
ing their  right  of  independent  thinking  they  make  their  vote 
depend  on  the  issues. 

The  final  criterion  of  the  desirability  of  the  immigrant  is  his 
character.  The  earlier  immigrants  were  noted  for  their  indus- 
try, economy,  and  frugality.  Upon  their  arrival  in  this  country 
they  frequently  developed  an  initiative  and  self-reliance  which 
had  previously  been  entirely  unsuspected.  Even  the  Irish,  al- 
though those  of  them  who  sought  the  cities  have  been  denounced 
severely,  have  proven  very  desirable  on  the  farm.  Further- 
more ethnically  nearly  all  of  the  earlier  immigrants  belonged 
to  the  same  Teutonic  stock  as  the  natives.  The  wearing  off  of  the 
clannishness  of  the  foreigner  and  the  appreciation  by  the  Amer- 
ican of  his  sterling  qualities  was  followed  by  rapid  assimila- 
tion. 

During  the  greater  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  inadequate 
transportation  facilities  prevented  a  considerable  number  of  im- 
migrants from  southern  and  eastern  Europe  from  entering  the 
United  States.  Towards  the  close  of  the  century,  these  facilities 
were  improved  so  as  to  equal  those  from  northwestern  Europe. 
As  a  result,  a  vast  number  of  immigrants  from  the  former  sec- 
tions began  to  arrive.  Simultaneously  immigration  from  north- 
western Europe  decreased  both  because  of  the  severe  strain  of 
the  competition  with  the  newer  immigration  and  also  because 
the  settling  of  the  United  States  and  the  industrial  improve- 
ments of  northwestern  Europe  had  eliminated  the  advantages 
of  the  former.  The  turning  point  in  immigration  was  about 
1890.  Since  that  time  the  bulk  of  the  immigrants  have  been 
Jews,  Italians,  Portuguese,  Poles,  Bohemians,  and  Slovaks. 


82  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

With  the  exception  of  the  Jew  all  of  these  are  laboring  under 
the  most  undesirable  economic  circumstances  at  home.  Out- 
of-date  industrial  organization  together  with  the  dense  popula- 
tion makes  the  United  States  seem  the  Isle  of  Bliss.  The  Jew, 
on  the  other  hand,  although  able  through  his  innate  shrewdness 
to  attain  an  independent  economic  status,  is  prevented  from 
doing  so  by  the  racial  and  religious  prejudices  of  the  people. 
This  is  especially  true  of  Russia  and  Rumania,  from  which  we 
obtain  the  mass  of  our  Jewish  immigrants.  That  such  emigra- 
tion is  not  due  to  economic  hardships  is  perfectly  clear  in  the 
case  of  the  latter  country,  from  which  practically  only  Jews  emi- 
grate while  the  Rumanians  remain  at  home. 

That  the  Teutonic  Americans  would  not  look  with  as  much 
pleasure  upon  the  Slavs,  Latins,  and  Jews  as  they  did  upon  the 
entrance  of  the  earlier  immigrants  who  were  of  their  own  race 
can  be  explained  as  being  due  to  unconscious  race  prejudice.  It 
can  not  be  said  that  the  recent  immigrant  is  very  inferior 
morally.  It  is  true  that  petty  thefts  occur  frequently  in  Italian 
settlements  and  that  the  number  of  lawsuits  in  Polish  settle- 
ments is  extraordinarily  large.  The  latter  fact  is  largely  due  to 
the  preference  on  the  part  of  the  Poles  to  settle  personal  differ- 
ence involving  trifling  amounts  in  court  rather  than  out  of 
•court  as  Americans  do.  None  of  the  excessive  criminal  tend- 
encies which  exist  among  these  peoples  in  the  cities  extend  to 
the  rural  communities.  In  these  communities  the  Italians  and 
Slavs  utilize  all  their  time  and  in  the  case  of  farm  owners  and 
tenants  every  available  inch  of  land.  They  are  very  frugal. 
The  opposition  they  meet  from  business  men  may  be  largely  due 
to  their  hesitation  to  spend.  That  they  do  not  devote  the  land 
around  their  houses  to  trees  and  flowers,  which  is  often  explained 
as  indicating  a  lack  of  the  appreciation  of  beauty,  may  probably 
be  just  as  much  due  to  this  characteristic  whether  we  call  it 
frugality  or  parsimony.  The  Jew,  on  the  other  hand,  meets  a 
much  heartier  welcome  from  the  business  world  on  account  of  his 
inclination  to  spend.  He  is  not  as  industrious  as  the  Slavs  or 
Italians.  Even  in  the  rural  communities  his  trading  propensity 
often  causes  him  to  devote  a  part  of  his  time  to  it. 

The  decrease  in  the  number  of  immigrants  that  engage  in  agri- 
culture may  not  be  entirely  due  to  the  change  in  the  type  of  im- 


THE  IMMIGRANT  83 

migrants  but  also  to  economic  changes  in  the  United  States  in 
connection  with  the  exhaustion  of  the  public  demesne  and  the 
more  intense  industrial  development.  In  fact  this  change  had 
already  commenced  in  the  case  of  the  earlier  immigrants.  For 
example  a  lower  percentage  of  the  Scandinavians  engaged  in 
agriculture  after  1880  than  before.  To  a  large  extent  it  is  due 
to  the  foreigners'  ignorance  of  the  opportunities  in  agriculture, 
the  uncertainty  of  the  returns,  and  the  isolated  condition  of 
American  farm  life.  The  friends  and  relatives  of  the  recent 
immigrant  are  in  the  cities  and  thither  he  goes.  With  the  ex- 
ception of  a  few  in  Wisconsin  we  find  the  Italian  farmers  in 
New  England,  Middle  Atlantic  and  Southern  states,  the  Slavs 
are  found  in  New  England,  Pennsylvania,  and  the  East  North 
Central  and  the  West  South  Central  states;  the  Jews  in  New 
England,  New  York,  and  New  Jersey;  and  the  Portuguese  in 
Massachusetts  and  Rhode  Island. 

Most  of  these  peoples  have  been  in  America  too  short  a  time 
to  enable  us  to  make  definite  conclusions  as  to  their  ability  to 
conform  to  our  customs.  The  third  generation  seems  almost 
Americanized.  Upon  their  entrance  here  they  retain  their  typi- 
cal food  and  clothes.  Soon  they  find  Old  World  styles  and  cus- 
toms inconvenient  and  commence  imitating  the  Americans. 
They  seem  content,  however,  with  the  cheapest  and  coarsest  food 
and  care  little  about  its  preparation.  In  selecting  clothes  they 
often  retain  their  predilection  for  gaudy  colors.  Of  course,  the 
custom  depends  on  the  people.  In  general  the  Latins  represent 
the  lowest  type,  the  Slavs  the  middle,  and  the  Jews  the  highest. 
The  Portuguese  are  considerably  lower  than  the  Italians.  The 
Bohemians  stand  foremost  among  the  Slavs,  showing  a  distinct 
preference  for  good  living  and  good  clothes  whenever  they  are 
financially  able  to  afford  them.  The  same  general  tendencies  are 
observed  in  the  case  of  houses.  The  Portuguese,  Italians,  and  a 
number  of  the  Slavic  peoples  manage  in  shacks  with  gardens 
right  up  to  the  walls.  The  Bohemians  and  Jews  are  eager  for 
more  substantial  dwellings.  Many  of  these  peoples  care  for 
cleanliness  and  neatness  neither  outside  or  nor  within  their 
houses.  Nevertheless  the  Portuguese  on  Martha's  Vineyard,  who 
are  considered  one  of  the  lowest  races  in  social  standards,  have 
well-kept  gardens  and  even  some  flowers  around  their  houses. 


84  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

One  reason  for  the  ill-prepared  food  and  the  lack  of  tidiness  is 
undoubtedly  that  the  women  and  children  must  work  so  much  in 
the  fields.  The  entire  family  spends  all  the  available  time  out- 
doors. Their  poverty  compels  this,  consequently  these  condi- 
tions are  bound  to  continue  until  these  peoples  have  accumulated 
a  surplus  sufficient  to  afford  them  some  leisure. 

Another  result  of  this  hard  work  is  the  neglect  of  education,  a 
tendency  furthered  by  an  inclination  to  under-estimate  its  value. 
In  their  own  countries  the  educational  facilities  are  very  de- 
ficient, thus  accounting  for  the  high  percentage  of  illiteracy 
among  them.  Since  religion  and  education  -are  very  closely  asso- 
ciated among  them  they  prefer  sending  their  children  to  the 
Catholic  parochial  schools  in  which  a  minimum  emphasis  is 
placed  on  English  education.  Furthermore  they  are  not  accus- 
tomed to  democratic  institutions.  Therefore  it  is  not  surprising 
that  they  take  little  interest  in  politics.  No  free  public  lands 
act  as  a  spur.  Gradually  but  very  slowly  they  are  commencing 
to  take  interest  in  local  affairs.  Participation  in  these  will  un- 
doubtedly broaden  their  conception  until  they  extend  their  at- 
tention to  state  and  national  affairs.  Here  again  lies  a  danger. 
Hitherto  they  have  generally  acted  as  a  group,  following  certain 
leaders.  If  these  leaders  should  happen  to  be  unscrupulous,  the 
result  would  be  detrimental.  The  exception  is  again  the  Jew. 
He  realized  the  value  of  education,  and  succeeds  well  in  educa- 
tional lines.  In  politics  he  acts  independently  although  gov- 
erned by  a  strong  race-consciousness. 

On  account  of  their  poverty  and  the  absence  of  free  public 
lands,  a  large  number  of  these  immigrants  become  tenants  and 
laborers.  Practically  all  the  Portuguese  labor  in  the  cranberry 
bogs  where  they  have  become  almost  indispensable.  The  Slavic 
laborer  is  very  subservient  while  the  Italian  is  inclined  to  shirk 
if  he  is  not  closely  supervised.  Their  type  of  agriculture  differs 
from  that  of  the  earlier  immigrant  with  respect  to  the  average 
acreage.  A  large  number  have  five  acres  or  less  while  very  few 
have  eighty  which  may  be  considered  the  minimum  holding  of 
the  earlier  immigrant.  On  account  of  the  smaller  holdings  there 
are  also  fewer  general  farmers.  The  agricultural  conditions  of 
their  own  countries  would  lead  us  to  expect  small  scale  farming. 
The  products  raised  depend,  of  course,  on  the  section  in  which 


THE  IMMIGRANT  85 

they  are  located.  They  raise  tobacco,  cotton,  truck,  and  fruit. 
The  Italian  especially  may  be  called  the  truck  and  fruit-grower. 
Their  bank  accounts  are  small  because  they  invest  their  surplus 
in  additional  land.  Consequently  the  steady  growth  in  their 
acreage  is  an  accurate  index  to  their  prosperity.  Such  pros- 
perity is,  however,  due  to  lower  standards  of  living  rather  than 
to  improved  methods  of  farming.  They  still  prefer  hand-labor 
to  machinery.  They  make  only  slight  use  of  fertilizers.  Again 
the  Jew  is  the  exception.  He  is  a  farm  owner  and  does  not  hesi- 
tate to  invest  in  machinery  and  fertilizers.  In  fact  he  tends  to 
go  to  the  other  extreme.  His  outlays  are  often  unwise.  More- 
over, he  likes  to  undertake  side  occupations.  As  a  result  it  fre- 
quently happens  that  he  does  not  prosper  on  the  farm.  This 
condition  is  the  more  surprising  because  he  has  had  more  out- 
side assistance  than  any  of  the  others.  The  best  managed  effort 
for  that  purpose  has  been  the  one  financed  by  the  Baron  de 
Hirsch  fund.  In  fact  the  Jew  would  probably  never  have  at- 
tempted agriculture  to  any  'considerable  extent  if  it  had  not  been 
for  these  efforts.  The  result  has  been  a  few  colonies  of  rather 
impractical  farmers.  Colonization  efforts  in  the  case  of  the 
other  immigrants  have  frequently  been  mismanaged  and  have 
failed  unless  each  one  has  been  given  sole  possession  of  his 
property.  Such  settlements  differ  considerably  from  the  group 
settlements  of  the  earlier  immigrants  in  that  each  one  is  far  more 
dependent  on  the  others  socially. 

Recently  the  impression  has  been  growing  that  too  many  un- 
desirable immigrants  are  being  admitted.  To  remedy  this  de- 
fect a  literacy  test  has  been  provided.  The  protection  which 
such  restrictive  legislation  will  afford  American  capital  and 
labor  will  undoubtedly  be  temporary.  Far  more  important  is 
the  question  whether  we  can  assimilate  the  hordes  which  are 
entering.  As  indicated  above,  the  number  entering  has  in- 
creased so  rapidly  in  the  last  few  years  that  the  result  is  doubt- 
ful. Nevertheless  a  literacy  test  does  not  seem  the  proper 
method  of  securing  the  result  desired.  It  excludes  individuals 
who  have  not  had  an  opportunity  rather  than  those  who  lack 
ability.  What  is  needed  is  a  publicity  bureau  to  inform  the 
immigrants  of  the  best  opportunities  in  this  country.  If  any  one 
is  admitted  without  the  necessary  means  to  betake  himself  to  the 


86  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

proper  locality  it  is  our  moral  duty  to  aid  him.  This  publicity 
and  distribution  bureau  would  find  no  lack  of  opportunities  for 
the  immigrants.  The  density  of  the  population  of  the  Southern 
States  to-day  is  very  low  compared  with  that  of  the  Northern : 

Alabama    35        New  York 152 

Arkansas   24         Illinois 86 

Louisiana    .*....  30        Ohio    102 

Texas    11         Pennsylvania    140 

Florida    9     „  Massachusetts    349 

The  wonderful  resources  of  those  States  are  almost  untouched. 
The  foreigners  are  very  welcome  there.  It  would  be  unfair 
to  the  South  to  deprive  her  of  these  immigrants  who  would  de- 
velop her  agricultural  resources  merely  because  the  North  is  more 
fully  developed.  In  the  West  there  are  still  485,000,000  acres  of 
idle  land.  The  East  has  its  abandoned  farms.  If  the  results 
of  a  policy  of  internal  distribution  of  the  immigrant  should  prove 
unsatisfactory  then  it  would  be  time  to  pass  laws  restricting 
immigration.  In  the  meantime  we  should  not  forget  America's 
great  debt  to  the  immigrant. 


WHY  IMMIGRANTS  GO  TO  CITIES1 

H.    P.    FAIRCHILD 

IT  is  apparent  that  our  foreign-born  residents  tend  irresistibly 
to  congregate  in  the  most  densely  settled  portions  of  the  country, 
and  in  the  most  densely  populated  states.  But  this  is  not  all. 
They  also  tend  to  congregate  in  the  largest  cities,  and  in  the 
most  congested  sections  of  those  cities.  In  1890,  61.4  per  cent, 
of  the  foreign-born  population  of  the  United  States  were  living 
in  cities  of  at  least  2500  population.  In  1900  the  percentage 
had  increased  to  66.3,  while  38.8  per  cent,  of  the  entire  foreign- 
born  population  were  huddled  into  the  few  great  cities  having 
a  population  of  over  100,000.  In  the  same  year  only  36.1  per 
cent  of  the  native-born  population  were  living  in  cities  of  over 
2500.  This  tendency  appears  to  be  increasing  in  strength,  and 

i  Adapted  from  "Immigration,"  pp.  229-231.  Macmillan,  New  York, 
1913. 


THE  IMMIGRANT  87 

is  more  marked  among  the  members  of  the  new  immigration  than 
among  the  older  immigrants.  Thus  in  1910  the  percentage  of 
foreign-born  living  in  cities  of  the  specified  size  had  risen  to  72.2. 
The  reasons  for  this  tendency  of  the  foreign-born  to  congregate 
in  the  most  densely  settled  districts  may  be  briefly  summarized 
as  follows.  (1)  They  land,  almost  without  exception,  in  cities, 
and  it  is  often  the  easiest  thing  for  them  to  stay  there.  It  takes 
some  capital,  knowledge,  and  enterprise  to  carry  the  immigrant 
any  distance  from  the  port  of  arrival,  unless  he  has  a  definite 
connection  in  some  other  place.  Yet  it  is  claimed  that,  land 
them  where  you  would,  about  the  same  number  of  immigrants 
would  find  their  way  to  New  York  within  a  few  weeks. 
(2)  Economic  opportunities  are  much  more  abundant  and  varied 
in  the  cities  than  in  the  country.  (3)  Such  occupations  as  are 
obtainable  in  the  city  require  much  less  capital  than  the  char- 
acteristic country  occupations.  With  a  few  dollars,  an  im- 
migrant in  the  city  can  set  himself  up  in  some  independent  busi- 
ness, depending  on  turning  over  his  capital  rapidly  to  make  a 
living.  There  are  so  many  people  in  the  city,  that  if  one  can 
.manage  to  serve  the  most  trivial  want  satisfactorily,  he  can  get 
along.  But  any  independent  business  in  the  country  requires 
a  larger  outlay  of  capital  than  the  average  immigrant  can  hope 
for.  The  only  country  occupation  open  to  him  is  common  farm 
labor,  and  there  are  other  reasons  which  make  him  ill  adapted 
for  this.  (4)  In  the  cities,  the  newly  arrived  immigrant  can 
keep  in  close  touch  with  others  of  his  own  race  and  tongue.  In 
the  compact  colony  of  his  fellow-countrymen,  he  may  be  sure 
of  companionship,  encouragement,  and  assistance  when  needed. 
It  is  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world  for  an  immigrant  to 
want  to  settle  where  there  are  numbers  of  others  of  his  immediate 
kind.  (5)  Knowledge  of  the  English  language  is  much  less 
essential  in  the  city  than  in  the  country.  The  presence  of  others 
who  can  speak  the  same  tongue  makes  it  possible  for  an  immigrant 
to  make  a  living  without  knowing  a  word  of  the  language  of  his 
adopted  country,  as  many  of  them  do  for  year  after  year.  In 
the  rural  districts,  however,  it  is  impossible  for  a  newly  arrived 
immigrant  to  get  along  at  all  without  a  knowledge  of  the 
English  language,  either  in  independent  business,  or  as  an  em- 
ployee, unless  he  settles  in  a  farm  colony  of  people  of  his  own 


88  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

race,  of  which  there  are,  of  course,  many  to  be  found.  (6)  Not 
only  is  there  more  chance  of  friendly  relief  from  fellow-country- 
men, in  case  of  necessity,  in  the  cities,  but  public  relief  agencies 
and  private  benevolences  are  much  more  available  there  than  in 
the  country.  (7)  The  excitement  and  novelty  of  American  city 
life  is  very  attractive  to  many  immigrants — just  as  it  is  to 
natives.  Trolley  cars,  skyscrapers,  and  moving  picture  shows 
are  wonderfully  alluring  features.  In  fact,  in  addition  to  the 
considerations  which  are  peculiar  to  himself,  the  immigrant  has 
all  the  general  incentives  to  seek  the  city,  which  operate  upon  the 
general  population,  and  which  have  produced  so  decided  a  change 
in  the  distribution  of  population  within  the  last  few  decades. 


IMMIGRATION  AS  A  SOURCE  OF  FARM  LABORERS1 

JOHN   LEE   COULTER 

AGRICULTURE  has  so  long  been  looked  upon  as  the  dumping- 
ground  of  all  surplus  labor  in  case  of  city  industries,  of  all 
poverty-stricken  persons  in  case  of  famines,  and  all  revolutionary 
individuals  in  case  of  disruption  in  European  countries,  that  it 
is  hard  to  realize  that  we  have  reached  the  state  where  farming 
in  practically  all  of  its  branches  requires  a  very  high  order  of 
intelligence  and  the  capacity  to  grasp  and  use  a  great  variety  of 
scientific  facts.  We  may,  therefore,  say  that,  although  it  is  true 
that  we  need  farm  labor  very  much,  as  a  relief  for  current  im- 
migration agricultural  distribution  is  not  promising. 

There  are  two  great  classes  of  immigrants  that  can  find  room 
in  various  branches  of  the  agricultural  industry.  The  first  class 
is  composed  of  those  from  overcrowded  agricultural  communities 
in  their  home  countries.  On  account  of  the  high  state  of  de- 
velopment of  their  industry  they  can  teach  us  much  which  we 
have  failed  to  take  advantage  of  and  which  would  result  in  the 
uplift  of  many  of  the  sub-industries  in  agriculture  in  this 
country.  These  should  be  urged  to  bring  with  them  their  home 
industries  and  introduce  new  phases  of  agriculture  into  this 
country.  The  United  States  has  been  spending  millions  of 

i  Adapted  from  Annals  33:  373-379,  Jan.-June,  1909. 


THE  IMMIGRANT  89 

dollars  in  introducing  new  plants,  animals,  and  methods  of  fann- 
ing from  other  countries.  At  the  same  time  little  groups  of 
foreigners,  such  as  the  Swiss  of  Wisconsin  or  later  the  Italians 
in  some  Southern  districts,  formerly  thought  of  as  the  least 
desirable  immigrants,  have  settled  in  our  midst  and  put  into 
practice  their  home  training,  which  has  resulted  in  the  establish- 
ing of  great  industries,  such  as  the  Swiss  cheese  industry.  The 
class  of  immigrants  most  desired  is,  therefore,  those  who  will 
add  most  to  the  industry  they  enter.  But  it  is  not  necessary 
that  the  immigrants  should  introduce  some  new  sub-industry  or 
be  in  advance  of  us  in  their  methods  in  order  to  make  them 
eligible  to  enter  the  agricultural  industries.  We  may  say  as  a 
general  proposition  that  farmers  from  nearly  any  agricultural 
community  in  Europe  would  be  acceptable  in  some  of  the  agri- 
cultural industries  of  this  country.  If  reasonable  pre- 
cautions are  taken  the  immigrants  referred  to,  even  though 
they  bring  no  new  industry,  will  not  become  public  charges,  but 
will  add  to  the  general  prosperity  of  the  country.  The  class 
objected  to,  the  refuse  from  other  industries,  not  only  adds 
nothing  new  but  is  apt  either  to  lower  the  standard  of  the  agri- 
cultural industry  or  to  become  a  public  charge. 

But  it  is  not  enough  to  encourage  one  class  of  immigrants 
and  discourage  or  prohibit  others.  The  immigrants  must  not 
only  come  from  rural  districts  in  their  mother-country;  if  they 
are  to  succeed,  they  must  be  properly  located  here.  Probabty 
the  most  important  single  condition  is  that  immigrants  should  be 
directed  toward  and  urged  to  locate  where  their  physical  en- 
vironment will  correspond  as  nearly  as  may  be  to  that  of  their 
mother-country.  By  that  I  mean  that  not  only  should  the 
climate  be  nearly  the  same,  but  the  precipitation,  the  soils,  and 
the  topography  should  approach  that  of  their  former  home,  if 
possible.  Failure  to  satisfy  these  preliminary  requirements  has 
resulted  in  almost  complete  failure  or  a  long  period  of  suffering, 
while  attention  to  these  factors  has  produced  unpredicted  suc- 
cesses. 

The  next  consideration  of  singular  importance  is  that  the 
social  environment  should  be  acceptable.  If  the  agricultural 
operations  are  not  close  to  a  city  where  others  of  the  same 
nationality  are  employed  in  other  industries,  it  is  desirable — 


90  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

almost  necessary — that  a  considerable  number  be  allowed,  even 
induced,  if  need  be,  to  settle  in  a  community.  At  first,  they  will 
live  as  in  a  world  apart,  but  they  give  off  ideas  and  take  on  others 
and  at  the  end  of  a  generation  or  two  a  few  intermarriages  will 
have  broken  down  the  hard-and-fast  wall  between  settlements. 
Common  markets,  interchange  of  labor  supply,  contests  between 
settlements,  political  and  other  conflicts,  and  back  of  it  all  the 
common-school  system,  soon  result  in  an  amalgamated,  assimi- 
lated race. 

The  next  consideration  which  should  be  held  in  mind  in  de- 
termining upon  the  distribution  of  immigrants  among  the  dif- 
ferent branches  of  the  agricultural  industry  is  the  economic 
status  of  the  people  to  be  distributed  and  their  plans  or  am- 
bitions for  the  future.  Thus,  some  are  independent  laborers, 
others  ready  to  become  tenants,  and  still  others  to  be  landowners. 
Some  plan  to  be  employees  as  long  as  they  stay;  some  of  these 
would  plan  to  save  a  snug  fortune  in  a  few  years  and  return  to 
the  mother-country,  others  to  earn  and  use  the  returns  from 
year  to  year.  Some  plan  to  step  up  to  the  position  of  tenant  and 
employer,  others  are  ready  to  enter  that  state  at  once.  Some  are 
ready  to  become  landowners  and  independent  farmers  by  pur- 
chase of  land  in  settled  districts,  others  with  less  capital  would 
go  to  the  frontier  with  poorer  markets  and  grow  up  with  the 
country,  enduring  hardships  but  accumulating  wealth.  There 
is  room  for  all  of  these  classes  of  people  in  nearly  all  parts  of  the 
country. 

The  extended  successes  accompanied  by  individual  failures  of 
the  English-speaking  peoples  who  early  entered  the  agricultural 
industry  of  this  country  need  not  be  expanded  upon  here. 
Neither  will  any  detailed  treatment  of  the  extensive  settlement 
by  Germans  in  the  North  Central  States  during  the  last  half -cen- 
tury be  made.  We  may  place  the  general  influx  of  Scandinavians 
into  Minnesota  and  the  Dakotas  in/  the  same  class  and  pass  by  all 
of  these — which  means  the  great  bulk  of  immigrants  of  agri- 
cultural peoples — with  the  statement  that  they  represent  success 
and  with  the  assumption  that  students  of  economics  know  of  these 
classes  and  know  of  their  successes.  It  is  because  we  are  too  apt 
to  stop  at  this  point  and  say  that  other  nationalities  as  a  rule 
have  little  or  nothing  to  offer  that  this  paper  is  presented.  The 


THE  IMMIGRANT  91 

writer  would  emphasize  the  fact  that  we  have  room  for  farmers 
from  many  lands,  assuming  that  we  act  intelligently  in  our  choice 
and  properly  distribute  those  who  come. 

The  large  Swiss  settlement  in  Green  County,  Wisconsin, 
illustrates  success  in  the  introduction  of  a  new  sub-industry  of 
great  importance.  Having  struggled  for  years  trying  to  farm 
in  the  American  way,  these  immigrants  finally  turned  to  the 
great  industry  of  their  home  country.  They  had  settled  in  a 
physical  enviroment  which  was  very  much  like  what  they  had 
left  abroad.  Now  several  hundred  cheese  factories  are  prosper- 
ing and  millions  of  pounds  of  cheese  are  annually  placed  upon 
our  markets.  Most  of  it  is  the  famous  Swiss  cheese.  It  should 
also  be  noted  that  nearly  all  of  those  engaged  in  making  this 
cheese  and  in  buying  and  selling  it  are  Swiss  or  of  Swiss  origin. 
The  writer  feels  that  this  colony  is  a  great  success,  is  the  kind 
of  thing  this  country  wants,  is  the  basis  of  prosperity  in  our 
agriculture,  and  must  not  be  condemned  because  of  the  fact  that 
broad  Swiss  is  sometimes  spoken  or  because  the  thousands  of 
members  of  the  district  are  not  assimilated  during  the  first 
generation.  The  writer  has  found  individuals  and  small  groups 
of  settlers  from  this  colony  and  from  "the  old  country"  moving 
far  up  into  the  Northwest  carrying  with  them  the  information 
and  ambition  to  start  other  colonies  as  prosperous  as  the  old  one. 
The  acquisition  of  such  an  industry  is  as  valuable  to  this  country 
as  the  introduction  of  a  new  plant  that  may  have  required  the 
expenditure  of  a  hundred  thousand  dollars. 

Turning  from  this  prosperous  Swiss  district,  we  may  direct 
our  attention  to  a  Bohemian  center  in  northwestern  Minnesota. 
The  Swiss  had  sent  explorers  ahead  to  find  a  desirable  location 
before  coming  to  this  country  and  settling  down.  The 
Bohemians  were  in  no  greater  financial  straits  in  their  home 
country  than  the  Swiss  had  been,  but  they  were  brought  in  and 
located  by  great  transportation  companies.  The  soil  where  the 
Bohemians  were  '  *  dumped ' '  is  very  good ;  but  the  country  needs 
an  expensive  drainage  system.  The  poor  immigrants  are  not 
in  a  position  to  establish  it.  The  result  is  that  for  some  fifteen 
years  we  have  had  before  our  eyes  a  Bohemian  colony  number- 
ing hundreds  of  people,  unable  to  establish  a  prosperous  com- 
munity because  of  unfavorable  natural  conditions.  These  people 


92  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

will  succeed  in  time,  despite  obstacles,  but  some  common-sense 
assistance  would  hasten  the  day  of  their  prosperity. 

In  other  parts  of  the  United  States  large  settlements  of 
Bohemians  of  no  higher  standard  are  prosperous  and  happy. 
As  an  illustration  of  the  status  that  should  obtain  the  writer 
would  refer  to  some  of  the  very  prosperous  communities  of 
Poles  and  Icelanders  in  North  Dakota  and  elsewhere.  No  class 
of  citizens,  whether  immigrants  or  descended  from  immigrants 
half  a  dozen  steps  removed,  could  ask  for  greater  material  prog- 
ress, better  buildings — homes,  churches,  schools,  and  town  build- 
ings— than  the  Polish  settlements  around  Warsaw,  Poland, 
Minto,  and  Ardock  in  Walsh  County,  North  Dakota.  The 
writer's  knowledge  of  this  and  other  communities  of  like  char- 
acter leads  him  to  say  that  to  encourage  such  settlements  is  to 
foster  prosperity  and  frugality  as  well  as  to  place  the  stamp 
of  approval  upon  a  home-loving,  land-loving  class  of  farmers. 
If  we  pass  on  to  settlements  of  Russians  we  may  say  nearly  the 
same  as  above.  With  a  love  for  land  and  home  which  is  almost 
beyond  our  understanding,  these  people  are  too  often  frugal  to 
a  fault.  They  come  with  a  low  standard  of  living  and  during 
the  first  generation  the  standard  does  not  rise  much.  But  the 
change  soon  comes.  The  children,  or  at  least  the  grandchildren, 
become  thoroughly  American  unless  the  immigrants  have  been 
located  in  an  enviroment  where  success  is  impossible.  In  this 
connection  we  might  refer  to  such  concrete  cases  as  the  settle- 
ments in  central  and  western  North  Dakota,  or  the  large  pros- 
perous colony  in  Ellis  County,  Kansas,  or  the  newer  settlements 
in  the  Southwest. 

Nor  need  we  stop  with  the  Swiss,  Bohemians,  Polanders,  Ice- 
landers, and  Russians.  If  we  turn  our  attention  to  the  Italians 
coming  into  the  South  we  find  them  filling  the  various  places 
demanding  attention.  There  is  a  large  demand  for  white  labor, 
and  the  mass  of  Italians  who  do  not  intend  to  make  this  their 
life-home  more  and  more  fill  a  long-felt  need.  With  the  great 
numbers  of  Mexicans  coming  across  the  line  for  part  of  a  season 
this  demand  may  gradually  be  better  and  better  satisfied.  There 
is  also  a  large  demand  for  tenants,  and  this  cry  is  being  answered 
by  Italians.  These  newcomers  are  not  only  fitting  into  the 
cotton-growing  industry  in  competition  with  the  colored  people, 


THE  IMMIGRANT  93 

but  are  proving  their  efficiency  in  vegetable  and  fruit  farming. 
Of  late  years  such  settlements  as  that  of  Italians  at  Tontitown, 
Arkansas,  in  the  Ozark  Mountains,  show  also  that  Italians  can 
bring  their  home  industry  with  them  and  succeed  here.  They 
not  only  settle  down  as  dignified  farmers,  but  actually  teach  our 
farmers  many  things.  Vegetables,  apples,  plums,  grapes,  and, 
other  fruits  are  successfully  grown.  If  the  colony  located  at 
Sunnyside,  Arkansas,  at  an  earlier  date  was  a  failure  at  first,  it 
is  no  sign  that  Italians  cannot  succeed  in  agriculture.  Immi- 
grants, largely  from  other  industries,  placed  in  competition  with 
Negroes  in  production  of  a  crop  that  they  knew  absolutely 
nothing  about,  under  foremen  accustomed  to  drive  slaves,  in  a 
swamp  country — hot  and  sickly  to  newcomers — attacked  by 
malarial  fever  and  losing  a  large  number  of  the  first  settlers,  it 
is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  failure  was  threatened.  But  suc- 
cess has  come  even  in  that  case,  where  failure  at  first  stared  all 
in  the  face. 

With  colonies  like  the  Brandsville  Swiss  settlement  in  Mis- 
souri, with  the  Italians  and  Russians  coming  even  into  old  New 
England,  with  Mexicans  pushing  up  into  the  Southwest,  and 
with  other  nationalities  gradually  finding  their  own,  we  may 
indeed  turn  our  attention  toward  the  agricultural  industry  as 
a  much-neglected  field.  The  cry  of  "back  to  the  land"  will  not 
go  unheeded  by  immigrants  who  have  come  from  farms  in  their 
mother-country  if  any  reasonable  amount  of  effort  is  put  forth  to 
' '  assist  them  to  find  themselves. ' ' 

Reference  might  also  be  made  to  the  Jewish  farm  problems  of 
the  Middle  Atlantic  States,  problems  which  have  importance  as 
far  West  as  Wisconsin;  and  to  the  Japanese  and  Chinese  agri- 
cultural labor  problems  of  the  far  West  and  Southwest.  There 
are  possibilities  here  which  few  people  have  yet  appreciated.  The 
question  of  demand  for  seasonal  agricultural  labor  and  the  pos- 
sibilities of  continual  labor  by  passing  from  one  industry  to 
another  in  neighboring  districts  or  following  the  same  industry 
from  one  part  of  the  country  to  another  are  left  untouched. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Balch,  Emily  G.     The  Peasant  Background  of  Our  Slavic  Fellow  Citi- 
zens.    Survey  24 :  6G7-77.     August,  1910. 


94  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Cance,  Alexander  E.  Recent  Immigrants  in  Agriculture.  Senate 
Document,  G33,  61  Cong.  3rd  Session,  Vol.  II,  1911. 

Cance,  Alexander  E.  Immigrant  Rural  Communities,  Annals  40 :  69- 
80.  March,  1912. 

Commr.  Gen.  of  Immigration.  Annual  Report,  year  ending  June  30, 
1919.  Supt.  of  Documents,  Washington,  D.  C. 

Coulter,  John  Lee.  The  Influence  of  Immigration  on  Agricultural  De- 
velopment, Annals,  33 :  373-379,  March,  1909. 

Connor,  Ralph.     The  Foreigner.     Doran,  New  York,  1909. 

Elkinton,  Joseph.     The  Doukhobors.     Charities,  13 :  252-6,  1904. 

Flom,  George  T.  History  of  Norwegian  Immigration  to  the  United 
States  from  the  Earliest  Beginning  Down  to  the  Year  1848. 
Torch  Press,  Cedar  Rapids,  la.,  1909. 

Hall,  Prescott  F.  Immigration  and  Its  Effect  Upon  the  United  States. 
Holt,  N.  Y.,  1906. 

Hoverstad,  T.  A.  The  Norwegian  Farmers  in  the  United  States.  Hans 
Jervell  Publishing  Co.,  Fargo,  N.  D.,  1915. 

Jenks,  Jeremiah  W.,  and  Lauck,  W.  Jett.  The  Immigration  Problem. 
Funk  &  •Wagnalls,  N.  Y.,  1917. 

Joseph,  Samuel.  Jewish  Immigration  to  the  United  States.  Columbia 
Univ.  studies.  Longmans,  N.  Y.,  1914. 

Mashek,  Nan.  The  Immigrant  and  the  Farm.  World  To-day,  20: 
206-9,  Feb.,  1911. 

Mathews,  John   L.     Tontitown.     Everybody's,  20:3-13,  Jan.,  1909. 

Morse,  W.  N.     Earning  a  Valley.     Outlook,  96 :  80-86,  Sept.  10,  1910. 

Morse,  W.  N.  Black  Dirt  People.  Outlook,  93:949-57,  December, 
1909. 

Robinson,  Leonard  G.  The  Agricultural  Activities  of  the  Jews  in 
America.  American  Jewish  Committee,  N.  Y.,  1912. 

Ross,  E.  A.  The  Germans  in  America.  Century,  88 :  98-104,  May, 
1914. 

Ross,  E.  A.  The  Scandinavians  in  America.  Century,  88 :  291-8,  June, 
1914. 

Shaler,  Nathaniel  S.  European  Peasants  as  Immigrants.  Atlantic, 
7:646-655,  May,  1893. 

Steiner,  E.  A.     On  the  Trail  of  the  Immigrant.     Revell,  N.  Y.,  1906. 

Steiner,  Lajos.  Our  Recent  Immigrants  as  Farmers.  Review  of  Re- 
views, 29  :  342-345,  March,  1914. 

Thomas,  Wm.  I.,  and  Znaniecki,  Florian.  The  Polish  Peasant  in  Eu- 
rope and  America,  Vols.  I-III,  University  of  Chicago  Press,  1918. 
Vols.  IV  and  V,  to  appear. 

Titus,  E.  K.  Pole  in  Land  of  Puritan.  New  England  Mag.,  29 : 162- 
6,  October,  1903. 


CHAPTER  V 

PRESENT  PROBLEMS  OF  COUNTRY  LIFE 
WANTED:  A   NATIONAL   POLICY   IN   AGRICULTURE1 

EUGENE  DAVENPORT 

THE  purpose  of  this  paper  is  to  invite  attention  to  the  very 
great  need  at  the  present  time  of  a  more  definite  policy  regarding 
agriculture ;  a  policy  that  shall  be  national  in  its  scope,  universal 
in  its  interests,  and  comprehensive  in  its  procedures. 

The  term  national  policy  is  not  intended  to  mean  a  policy 
of  the  Federal  Government  as  over  against  the  States,  nor  in- 
deed a  governmental  policy  of  any  kind  as  distinct  from  the  con- 
victions and  the  ideals  of  the  people  from  which  and  from  whom 
our  democratic  government  proceeds. 

What  is  meant  is  rather  such  consensus  of  intelligent  opinion 
and  such  a  deliberate  judgment  about  agriculture  as  shall  repre- 
sent the  constructive  purpose  of  the  American  people  whether 
farmers,  laborers,  or  business  men,  and  whether  operating  in 
their  private  or  their  governmental  capacities.  What  is  meant 
is  such  a  common  recognition  of  certain  facts  and  principles  to 
be  established  by  investigation  and  conference  as  shall  amount  at 
any  given  time  to  a  national  policy  about  farms  and  farmers  and 
farming  as  over  against  the  policy  which  assumes  a  struggle  of 
each  separate  interest  to  maintain  its  place  in  a  constantly  shift- 
ing balance  of  power  in  which  all  are  frankly  antagonistic  and 
each  prospers  or  suffers  in  proportion  to  the  force  it  is  able  to 
exert  and  the  advantage  it  is  able  to  secure. 

This  policy  is  not  called  a  program  because  programs  are  made 
to  carry  out  fixed  and  predetermined  purposes,  while  the  thing 
in  the  mind  of  the  speaker  is  rather  a  status  and  a  procedure 

i  Adapted  from  "Proceedings  of  32nd  Annual  Convention  of  the  Assn. 
of  Am.  Agricultural  Colleges  and  Experiment  Stations,"  pp.  52-68. 

95 


96  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

under  shifting  conditions,  with  the  intent  always  to  promote  the 
prosperity  of  the  farmer,  not  as  a  favored  class  but  as  a  typical 
and  component  part  of  society,  producing  the  food  of  the  people 
and  in  potential  control  of  the  land  policies  of  the  commonwealth. 

My  general  thesis  is  this :  That  considerations  of  fairness  and 
of  public  safety  both  demand  a  higher  regard  for  the  affairs  and 
interests  of  the  open  country  and  for  the  welfare  of  the  farmer 
and  his  family;  that  in  a  real  democracy  the  farmer  must  stand 
higher  than  hitherto  in  public  esteem,  not  because  of  demands  he 
may  make  upon  society  but  by  reason  of  his  worth  and  his  service ; 
and  that  he  should  count  for  more  in  the  management  of  public 
affairs  not  administratively,  in  which  he  has  little  skill,  but  in 
matters  requiring  counsel,  in  which  he  is  comparatively  wise  and 
relatively  unprejudiced. 

Agriculture,  whether  considered  as  a  profession  or  .as  a  mode 
of  life,  has  never  figured  adequately  in  world  affairs,  being  re- 
garded by  publicists  mainly  as  the  source  of  cheap  food  for 
cheap  labor  and  of  raw  materials  good  for  commerce  and  for 
manufacture,  both  convenient  for  holding  the  balance  of  trade 
upon  the  right  side  of  the  ledger.  The  farmer  himself  has  been 
generally  considered  as  an  unskilled  laborer,  a  humble  producer 
rather  than  a  typical  citizen. 

Outside  the  technical  journals,  the  public  press  is  almost  as 
silent  about  farmers  and  agriculture — except  for  an  occasional 
poor  joke,  the  annual  crop  statistics,  or  the  market  report — as  if 
our  farming  were  done  upon  Mars.  The  columns  are  full  of  the 
struggles  between  labor  and  capital,  of  society  notes  and  of  busi- 
ness schemes,  but  in  general  a  murder  trial  with  a  mystery,  or 
the  love  letters  in  a  triangular  divorce  suit  are  good  for  more 
space  than  the  greatest  livestock  exposition  in  the  world.  Our 
magazines  and  the  public  mind  are  full  of  modern  scientific 
achievements  and  of  art,  but  how  much  does  the  world  know  or 
care  about  the  farmer  and  his  phenomenal  success  in  animal  and 
plant  improvement  or  the  pictures  he  paints  every  year  upon 
the  landscape?  Clearly  our  public  press  is  animated  almost 
exclusively  by  urban  interests  even  in  cities  that  owe  their  very 
commercial  existence  and  financial  support  to  the  agricultural 
activity  of  the  immediate  environs.  To  be  sure,  the  statistician 
and  the  speculator  know  something  about  farming  but  not  about 


PROBLEMS  OF  COUNTRY  LIFE          97 

the  farmer,  for  their  interest  is  limited  to  the  mass  results  in  the 
form  of  millions  of  bushels  and  does  not  extend  to  the  matter  of 
their  production,  the  welfare  of  the  producer,  or  the  effect  upon 
the  land. 

Everybody  agrees  that  this  is  to  be  a  different  world  after  the 
war,  but  no  thoughtful  man  can  fail  to  be  struck  with  the  char- 
acter of  the  economic  and  social  questions  that  begin  to  loom 
large  in  connection  with  reconstruction :  trade  routes,  the  new 
merchant  marine,  raw  materials,  improved  facilities  for  extending 
credit,  cooperative  business,  public  ownership  of  public  utilities, 
government  oversight  of  private  enterprises,  excess  profits,  in- 
heritance taxes,  prohibition,  woman  suffrage,  the  perennial 
problems  of  the  relations  between  capital  and  labor,  the  mini- 
mum wage,  the  maximum  day,  and  time  and  a  half  for  overtime. 
Not  an  item,  not  a  suggestion,  of  anything  agricultural  either  as 
a  business  or  as  a  mode  of  life,  if  we  may  except  the  occasional 
mention  of  the  word  "land"  and  certain  plans  for  providing 
homesteads  for  the  returning  soldiers,  which  is  an  army,  not  an 
agricultural,  proposition. 

For  the  most  part  our  considerable  list  of  reconstruction 
problems  may  be  reduced  to  the  two  great  questions  that  mainly 
concern  the  public  mind  to-day;  namely,  foreign  and  domestic 
trade,  and  the  perennial  contest  between  capital  and  labor.  We 
forget  the  citizen  because  we  have  learned  to  think  politically 
and  socially  mainly  in  terms  of  commerce  based  upon  manu- 
facture, under  conditions  requiring  vast  combinations  of  capital, 
concentration  of  population,  and  division  of  labor — the  very  con- 
ditions that  inspire  not  only  greed  of  gain  and  social  unrest,  but 
international  war.  Yet  our  interest  lies  here  rather  than  with 
the  peaceful  pursuits  of  the  open  country. 

It  may  well  be  said  that  if  there  is  a  dearth  of  live  problems 
in  the  public  mind  regarding  agriculture,  it  is  the  fault  of  the 
farmers  themselves  inasmuch  as  each  interest  is  assumed  to  be 
responsible  for  promoting  its  own  affairs.  Granted,  but  even 
so  the  conclusion  is  irresistible  that  people  generally  do  not  regard 
agricultural  problems  as  of  public  concern,  while  my  chief  con- 
tention is  that  the  public  even  more  than  the  farmer  is  interested 
in  the  discovery  and  the  proper  solution  of  every  problem  con- 
nected with  the  public  domain,  with  the  production  of  food,  and 


98  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

with  the  character  and  condition  of  that  portion  of  our  popula- 
tion that  shall  live  upon  the  land. 

I  say  that  the  public  is  more  interested  than  the  farmer  in 
these  matters  because  "The  Farmer"  is  actually  a  collection  of 
individuals  who  can  for  the  most  part  extricate  themselves  from 
any  intolerable  situation  that  may  develop ;  while  the  country 
as  a  whole  cannot  extricate  itself  from  the  consequences  of  bad 
agricultural  policies  that  easily  develop  when  matters  of  funda- 
mental character  intimately  connected  with  food  production, 
home-building,  and  land  ownership  are  left  to  shift  for  them- 
selves. 

But  we  are  not  without  a  start  in  the  right  direction.  More 
than  half  a  century  ago  we  began  to  think  nationally  about 
agriculture.  The  impulse  had  its  origin  in  our  consular  service 
and  in  the  primitive  collecting  instinct  whereby  seeds  and  roots 
of  promising  foreign  plants  were  sent  to  America  for  trial.  Out 
of  this  grew  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  representing  the 
official  determination  of  America  to  do  whatever  could  be  done 
administratively  to  promote  agricultural  welfare  at  home  and 
marketing  facilities  abroad. 

Again,  in  the  darkest  days  of  our  Civil  War  the  United  States 
established  the  most  unique  educational  s}7stem  which  the  world 
has  ever  known ;  hence  this  association  and  the  colleges  it  repre- 
sents. Aiming  at  increased  production  though  it  does,  and 
national  in  scope  though  it  is,  yet  after  all,  the  basis  of  the  system 
is  the  education  and  the  initiative  of  the  individual,  for  it  is 
founded  upon  instruction  of  collegiate  grade  and  based  upon 
scientific  investigation  of  the  highest  order.  We  could  not  have 
a  better  foundation  for  'the  edifice  that  shall  one  day  stand  as 
emblematical  of  our  national  aims  and  purposes  in  agriculture 
than  is  the  education  system  represented  lby  this  Association 
of  American  Agricultural  Colleges,  and  there  could  be  no  better 
corner-stone  for  the  structure  than  the  work  of  the  experiment 
stations  connected  therewith. 

But  this  is  only  a  beginning  of  a  national  policy  for  agri- 
culture ;  there  yet  exists  a  wide  gulf  between  what  these  public 
agencies  are  doing  or  can  do  and  what  the  individual  is  accom- 
plishing or  able  to  accomplish  under  anything  like  present  or 
prospective  conditions.  If  agriculture  is  to  figure  as  it  must 


PROBLEMS  OF  COUNTRY  LIFE          99 

figure  in  a  successful  democracy,  then  this  gulf  must  somehow 
be  bridged. 

It  must  never  be  forgotten  in  this  connection  that  in  a  suc- 
cessful democracy  occuping  territory  of  continental  proportions, 
approximately  one-third  of  all  the  people  will  live  upon  the  land. 
Moreover,  it  is  this  third  and  not  the  mass  representing  organized 
industry  or  the  fraction  representing  ' l  business, ' '  through  which 
the  line  of  descent  will  mainly  run.  Who  these  people  are, 
therefore,  that  live  upon  the  land,  which  third  of  our  population 
they  represent,  and  what  they  are  thinking  about  day  by  day 
and  year  by  year  as  the  generations  come  and  go,  may  easily  make 
all  the  difference  between  success  and  failure  in  the  experiment 
of  democratic  government,  to  which  all  the  world  now  stands 
committed  and  in  which  experiment  the  United  States  occupies 
a  position  of  associated  leadership  as  conspicuous  as  it  was 
inevitable. 

Specifically,  then,  what  is  it  that  agriculture  needs  and  does 
not  have  but  that  is  essential  to  the  highest  success  and  the 
greatest  safety  both  of  the  farming  people  and  of  the  nation  as  a 
whole  ?  What  are  some  of  the  things  that  must  be  provided  from 
the  national  end  after  the  individual,  by  his  education,  his  in- 
dustry, and  his  thrift,  has  done  all  that  may  fairly  be  expected 
of  him,  and  the  State  he  lives  in  has  done  what  it  can  ? 

If  agriculture  were  solely  >an  individual  enterprise  we  should 
simply  consult  the  farmer  about  his  needs  and  desires.  But 
agriculture  is  more  than  farming  and  the  public  must  be  party 
to  any  policies  affecting  the  production  of  its  food,  the  manage- 
ment of  its  lands,  or  the  social  and  political  welfare  of  its  people. 
The  question,  therefore,  what  does  agriculture  need?  must 
be  divided  and  considered  both  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
farmer  and  from  that  of  the  public  in  its  largest  capacity — 
that  is  to  say,  the  nation,  present  and  prospective. 

First  of  all,  then,  what  more  does  the  farmer  need?  If  this 
question  should  be  put  to  the  observer  from  the  parlor  car  or  to 
the  publicist,  he  would  likely  say  that  the  farmer  needs  to  work 
to  a  better  purpose  and  to  be  more  careful  of  his  equipment; 
that  he  doubtless  needs  more  capital  as  he  certainly  needs  to 
organize  his  affairs  according  to  modern  business  methods,  and  to 
know  better  than  he  does  what  things  cost  him. 


100  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

But  if  the  same  question  be  asked  the  farmer,  he  will  have  a 
different  answer.  He  will  say  that  the  farmer  needs  many 
things  which  he  is  powerless  to  provide  but  without  which  the 
business  is  becoming  less  and  less  desirable  from  a  relative  point 
of  view,  therefore  declining. 

He  will  probably  say  first  of  all  that  he  wants  better  ed- 
ucational opportunities  for  his  children,  for  as  matters  stand 
now  they  must  leave  the  parental  roof  at  a  tender  age  or  else  he 
must  uproot  his  "home,  abandon  his  business,  and  go  to  town  if 
his  children  are  not  to  fall  behind  those  of  the  butcher,  the 
baker,  and  the  candlestick  maker — to  be  more  specific,  of  the 
carpenter,  the  plumber,  and  the  day  laborer. 

But  we  have  the  Smith-Hughes  bill  which  in  itself  is  evidence 
that  the  public  has  not  only  recognized  but  acknowledged  the 
conditions  and  begun  to  correct  them — in  a  wise  way  too,  for 
in  a  democracy  the  people  must  take  the  lead  or  at  least  carry  a 
part  of  the  burden  of  all  progress.  This  plan  which  we  have 
begun  is  a  logical  extension  of  the  land-grant  idea  into  the  domain 
of  secondary  education. 

We  are  evidently  headed  in  the  right  direction  at  this  point, 
but  our  progress  will  be  insufficient  until  we  succeed  in  providing 
for  the  children  of  the  farm  as  wholesome,  as  adequate,  and  as 
cultural  if  not  as  varied,  educational  opportunities  as  are  pro- 
vided in  the  most  favored  cities.  There  are  obstacles  to  be  over- 
come of  course,  chief  of  which  are  the  low  tax-paying  ability 
of  the  open  country  as  compared  with  the  congested  city,  and 
the  high  per  capita  cost  of  education. 

But  if  we  are  to  remain  a  democracy  and  be  safe,  this  burden 
must  in  some  way  be  assumed  by  the  public  and  not  remain  a 
permanent  handicap  upon  the  profession  of  farming.  If  it  is 
not  so  assumed  as  a  national  policy  and  as  .a  part  of  a  national 
plan,  even  to  the  extent  of  heavily  subsidizing  rural  education,  it 
is  inevitable  that  we  shall  ultimately  have  a  peasant  population 
on  the  farms,  and  colleges  such  as  ours  will  have  no  students  of 
collegiate  grade  except  from  among  land-holding  city  residents. 
It  requires  no  prophet  to  foresee  that  when  such  a  time  comes 
democratic  institutions  will  begin  to  crumble  at  their  foundations. 

Next  to  the  lack  of  educational  opportunities  for  his  children 
comparable  with  those  of  the  city,  the  farmer  will  insist  that  the 


PROBLEMS  OF  COUNTRY  LIFE  101 

income  from  his  business  is  inadequate  to  enable  him  to  main- 
tain the  same  scale  of  living  as  that  provided  through  other 
occupations  requiring  equal  or  even  less  preparation,  industry, 
or  investment. 

Pushed  for  proof,  he  will  reason  substantially  as  follows :  All 
studies  in  cost  accounting  show  a  labor  income  from  farming 
which  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases  is  ridiculously  small,  failing 
oftener  than  not  to  require  more  than  three  figures  for  its  ex- 
pression and  recognized  by  the  public  as  a  joke.  We  are  not 
now  considering  the  exceptional  man,  or  what  might  be  done, 
but  we  are  to  study  deliberately  what  the  great  mass  of  farmers, 
our  hardest  working  people,  are  accomplishing  or  indeed  can 
accomplish  in  earning  power  through  the  production  of  staple 
foods  under  conditions  that  have  prevailed  and  that  are  likely  to 
obtain  at  the  close  of  the  war  and  afterwards. 

The  farmer  will  confess  that  he  has  long  been  criticized  for 
tight-fistedness  in  refusing  to  pay  "decent  wages"  and  that  he 
has  thereby  lost  the  bulk  of  his  best  labor,  even  his  own  sons. 
He  will  point  out  that  a  Federal  milk  commission  very  recently 
after  six  weeks'  deliberation  refused  to  allow  a  price  that  would 
net  him  thirty  cents  an  hour  for  the  labor  involved  in  milk  pro- 
duction, even  though  the  same  milk  was  delivered  by  drivers 
getting  a  hundred  or  more  dollars  a  month  with  no  risks  and 
no  expenses. 

He  will  point  out  how  severely  he  has  been  criticized  in  the 
press  and  from  the  platform  for  failure  to  provide  bathrooms  in 
his  home  and  modern  conveniences  for  his  wife,  whom  he  loves 
as  other  men  love  their  wives ;  but  he  will  also  point  out  that  the 
policy  which  refused  him  thirty  cents  an  hour  for  his  own  labor, 
permits  the  plumber  in  a  country  town  to  charge  eighty  cents 
(by  the  latest  information,  to  be  exact,  eighty-one  and  one- 
quarter)  with  fifty  cents  for  a  boy  helper,  who  for  the  most  part 
does  little  work,  and  the  like  of  whom  would  not  be  "worth  his 
salt"  upon  the  farm. 

This  farmer  will  be  able  to  show  also  that  if  he  should  attempt 
to  pay  the  minimum  wage  of  Mr.  Ford  or  of  the  labor  unions 
with  an  eight-hour  day  and  time  and  a  half  for  overtime  now 
recognized  by  the  Federal  Government,  he  would  either  speedily 
lose  his  farm  or  else  the  cost  of  food  would  run  to  a  level  un- 


102  ,  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

a'pproacneci  by  the  present  war  prices.  Specifically,  this  would 
mean  that  milk  would  have  retailed  in  Chicago  last  winter  at 
some  seventeen  cents  a  quart  instead  of  twelve,  as  allowed  by  a 
Federal  commission,  or  the  thirteen  that  would  have  satisfied  the 
farmers,  and  that  present  prices  of  meat  and  butter  would  ex- 
pand some  twenty  or  twenty-five  per  cent. 

If  he  reads  the  daily  papers,  as  he  probably  does,  this  farmer 
will  also  point  out  that  under  Federal  management  of  the  rail- 
ways, his  local  station  agent  (not  a  telegrapher)  has  just  been 
granted  a  minimum  wage  of  ninety-five  dollars  a  month  on  the 
basis  of  an  eight-hour  day,  pro-rata  addition  for  two  days  over- 
time and  time  and  a  half  for  further  excess.  Any  good  farm 
laborer  can  do  this  work;  how,  therefore,  shall  the  farmer  com- 
pete at  less  than  thirty  cents  an  hour  and  with  what  arguments 
shall  he  preserve  the  independence  and  initiative  of  his  own  son 
over  against  a  government  job,  protected  by  the  civil  service, 
backed  by  a  powerful  union,  and  guaranteeing  with  no  invest- 
ment and  no  risk  a  minimum  wage  far  in  excess  of  what  the  father 
has  ever  made  upon  the  farm,  with  an  eight-hour  day  and  time 
and  a  half  for  overtime,  spent  wholly  under  shelter  and  mostly 
in  an  armchair  ? 

The  situation  is  illustrated  by  my  own  experience  within  a 
fortnight  wherein  a  farm  laborer  protested  against  his  wage  of 
seventy-seven  dollars  per  month  upon  the  ground  that  his  son 
of  seventeen  was  making  one  hundred  and  sixty-five  dollars  a 
month  in  the  railroad  yards  a  mile  away. 

There  are  vast  wheat  growing  regions  in  this  country  under- 
lain by  coal  deposits.  Here  farming  and  mining  come  together. 
Here  the  farmer's  income  from  wheat  growing  and  the  miner's 
wage  may  be  directly  compared.  When  this  is  done,  it  will  be 
found  that  the  farmer  is  unable  with  the  most  modern  machinery 
and  methods  to  cultivate  with  his  own  hands  land  enough  to 
produce  a  labor  income  equal  to  that  of  the  soft  coal  miner, 
working  and  living  in  the  same  neighborhood,  trading  at  the 
same  stores,  attending  the  same  churches,  and  sending  his 
children  to  the  same  schools. 

Here  we  have  a  class  of  artisans  largely  of  alien  birth  and  not 
yet  citizens,  but  protected  in  their  earning  capacity  by  a  power- 
ful organization  whose  existence  and  demands  are  now  recognized 


PROBLEMS  OF  COUNTRY  LIFE         103 

as  a  part  of  our  national  policy.  No  preparation  is  required  for 
their  business,  nothing  is  invested,  no  taxes  paid,  and  no  risks 
assumed  except  perhaps  a  slightly,  a  very  slightly,  increased 
hazard  of  life  offset  to  a  considerable  degree  by  easier  hours  and 
healthier  conditions  of  work. 

But  the  citizen  farmer  who  lives  in  the  same  community  with 
the  miner,  whose  children  grow  up  with  his  own,  and  who  is  a 
manager  in 'a  small  way,  competing  in  the  labor  market,  must  in- 
vest in  land  and  buildings,  tools  and  livestock.  He  must  pay 
taxes  and  insurance  and  repairs  and  veterinary  fees.  He  must 
work  often  sixteen  hours,  seldom  less  than  ten,  and  he  must  be 
on  duty  day  and  night,  ready  always  to  care  for  his  independent 
plant — all  this,  and  yet  in  order  to  receive  a  labor  income  equal 
to  that  of  the  soft  coal  miner,  whether  citizen  or  alien,  with  no 
preparation,  with  nothing  invested  but  a  pick  and  shovel,  and 
with  no  risk  involved,  the  farmer  must  not  only  work  himself 
as  no  professional  laborer  ever  works,  but  he  must  also  work  his 
children  without  pay. 

The  ultimate  consequence  of  this  condition  needs  no  exposition 
here.  By  as  much  as  this  country  could  not  permanently  remain 
half  free  and  half  slave,  no  more  can  our  democracy  endure  with- 
out a  national  policy  and  plan  that  will  equalize  to  some  degree 
at  least  the  income  from  the  land  and  investment  in  the  most 
perishable  of  all  equipment  on  the  one  hand  and  the  rewards  of 
unskilled  labor  upon  the  other. 

But  if  the  profits  of  farming  are  so  meager,  how  can  we  have 
so  many  "rich  farmers"  here  and  there  as  to  make  the  term 
proverbial?  The  situation  to  which  this  question  refers  will  bear 
analysis.  There  are  many  rich  farmers,  as  riches  go  among 
common  people,  but  it  will  be  found  upon  investigation  that  they 
belong  to  one  of  four  classes,  mostly  unique  or  temporary : 

First.  Exceptional  men  on  large  farms  or  else  engaged  in 
some  branch  of  specialized  farming  which  by  its  nature  is  limited 
in  its  application. 

Second.  Men  who  have  inherited  their  farms  and  to  whom 
these  farms  therefore  represent  a  capital  investment  that  cost 
them  nothing. 

Third.  Men  who  have  deliberately  raised  large  families  in 
order  to  have  at  hand  an  abundance  of  unpaid  labor,  brutalizing 


104  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

womanhood  from  no  higher  motives  than  actuated  thousands  in 
raising  soldiers  for  the  Kaiser. 

Fourth.  Men  who  have  obtained  their  lands  in  an  early  day  at 
a  nominal  rate,  often  as  low  as  fifty  cents  an  acre,  and  who  have 
worked  the  land  "for  all  that's  in  it,"  mining  out  fertility  as 
the  operator  mines  out  coal.  Here  is  where  most  of  the  rich 
farmers  will  be  found — a  crop  that  can  be  produced  once  and  only 
once  in  any  country. 

Whoever  knows  the  conditions  that  actually  obtain  in  respect 
to  home-building  will  understand  the  deep-seated  unrest  that  is 
becoming  wide-spread  in  this  country  because  of  the  increasing 
difficulty  in  securing  ownership  to  land.  To  the  public  generally 
this  is  a  sealed  chapter  in  the  notes  of  an  unwritten  history,  but 
to  those  of  us  who  can  remember  when  there  was  no  "Great 
West,"  when  Cincinnati  was  called  Porkoplis,  and  when  steers 
were  fed  from  the  open  ranges  across  the  prairies  to  the  central 
market,  this  is  no  mystery.  We  understand  perfectly  well  what 
the  mass  of  Americans  do  not  know,  that  until  about  the  opening 
of  the  present  century,  men,  women  and  children  worked  will- 
ingly and  often  cruelly  without  money  and  without  price  for  the 
sake  of  developing  out  of  nature's;  raw  material  "a  home  of  their 
own. ' '  That  opportunity  has  now  gone  and  with  it  the  impulse 
to  labor  for  something  better  than  money.  Hereafter  the  farmer, 
like  other  people,  will  have  to  reckon  his  income  in  terms  of 
cash. 

The  wave  of  land  hunger  now  going  upf  over  this  country  is 
but  the  premonition  of  what  is  coming  if  it  is  to  remain  as  diffi- 
cult as  now  for  country-minded  young  families  to  obtain,  within  a 
reasonable  period,  homes  of  their  own.  Here  within  our  midst 
almost  unnoticed  and  for  the  most  part  unknown  is  growing  up 
a  situation  of  vastly  more  import  to  public  welfare  than  are  all 
the  questions  of  merchant  marine,  trade  routes,  raw  materials, 
and  preferential  tariffs  combined.  The  facts  are  that  as  matters 
are  going  now,  land  is  slipping  away  from  the  typical  farmer,  and 
his  children  will  soon  be  disappearing  from  our  colleges. 

But  why  be  so  solicitous  about  a  class  of  people  who  cannot 
or  will  not  take  care  of  themselves?  That  is  exactly  the  point. 
We  have  now  reached  a  time  in  world  development  when  we 
recognize  the  fact  that  many  very  good  things  cannot  take  care 


PROBLEMS  OF  COUNTRY  LIFE         105 

of  themselves  but  must  be  cared  for,  even  fought  for,  and  that 
the  policy  of  laissez  faire  is  often  fatal  to  peaceful  progress. 

If  the  farmer  is  not  satisfied  and  thinks  he  can  better  himself 
then  let  him  change  his  profession.  Exactly,  and  that  is  what 
he  is  doing  in  an  alarming  proportion  of  instances,  but  what 
about  the  rest  of  us,  and  wherewithal  shall  we  be  fed  ?  If  farm- 
ing were  a  profession  engaging  but  a  few  thousand  people,  we 
might  afford  to  let  it  alone,  but  it  is  our  largest  industry,  engag- 
ing millions  of  some  kind  of  citizens.  It  is  a  matter  of  public 
concern,  therefore,  both  ways,  that  they  be  prosperous  and 
gradually  evolving  with  the  rest  of  the  world. 

It  is  because  the  farmer  as  such  cannot  take  care  of  himself; 
because  we  are  drifting  rapidly  away  from  conditions  that  pro- 
mote a  stable  democracy  and  toward  agrarian  revolution,  that 
a  national  policy  about  agriculture  must  be  one  of  the  major  and 
not  the  minor  considerations  in  readjusting  the  affairs  of  this 
disturbed  country,  which  is  now,  in  common  with  the  rest  of 
the  world,  in  a  highly  fluid  condition  and  ready  for  the  hand  of 
the  molder. 

Whatever  is  true  of  farmers  as  individuals  or  of  farming  as  a 
profession,  the  chief  concern  about  agriculture  after  all,  and 
the  considerations  that  demand  a  national  policy  and  plan,  fall 
well  within  the  domain  of  public  welfare. 

The  country  as  a  whole,  even  more  than  the  average  farmer,  is 
concerned  about  the  housing,  the  sanitary  surroundings,  and 
the  health  of  that  third  of  our  population  which  lives  upon  the 
farm  under  what  ought  to  be  and  what  can  well  be  ideal  physical 
and  moral  conditions  for  raising  the  citizens  of  a  democracy. 
Yet  no  man  will  admit  that  even  in  this  great,  new,  rich  country, 
with  its  high  percentage  of  literacy,  are  these  conditions  any- 
where near  ideal. 

Again,  the  country  as  a  whole  is  more  interested  than  the 
average  man  is  likely  to  be  in  the  kind  and  amount  of  education 
which  is  to  be  combined  with  the  wholesome  industry  that 
naturally  attends  upon  life  in  the  country,  and  in  so  far  as 
either  of  these  considerations  is  hampered  from  lack  of  funds 
or  ideals,  the  public  is  bound  to  supply  both,  for  the  class  of 
people  is  too  numerous,  its  power  for  good  or  evil  too  great,  to 
justify  neglect. 


106  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  home-building  instinct  is  not  only  the  greatest  known 
incentive  to  work  but  it  is  also  the  safety  clutch  for  democratic 
institutions.  We  have  enjoyed  a  half  century  of  unexampled 
prosperity,  largely  because  it  has  been  based  upon  cheap  food — 
food  so  cheap  as  not  to  repay  the  labor  bestowed  upon  it,  to  say 
nothing  of  capital,  of  which  there  was  little,  or  the  extraction  of 
fertility,  of  which  there  was  much.  There  is  nothing  that  will 
get  so  much  work  out  of  a  man  and  his  family  as  the  desire  to 
own  the  home  that  shelters  them,  and  we  have  capitalized  this 
instinct  to  the  limit,  together  with  an  almost  total  disregard 
of  virgin  fertility.  This  latter  component  of  cheap  food  is 
gone;  it  behooves  us  now  to  make  the  most  of  the  former  even 
though  it  may  somewhat  increase  the  price  of  food. 

Under  existing  conditions  farmers  will  do  one  of  two  things : 
require  financial  returns  comparable  with  those  of  other  people, 
or  settle  back  upon  the  primitive  self-sufficing  system,  producing 
not  a  supply  but  a  simple  surplus  over  their  own  needs.  In 
either  case  more  expensive  food  is  inevitable — in  the  one  instance 
from  an  increased  initial  cost  of  production  and  in  the  other 
from  a  reduced  supply. 

From  the  standpoint,  therefore,  both  of  the  amount  and  the 
price  of  food  it  is  in  every  way  to  the  advantage  of  the  public 
to  stimulate  the  home-building  as  against  the  money-making 
motive  among  farmers.  That  way  too  lies  safety  for  our  de- 
mocracy. To  this  end  it  must  be  made  easier  for  the  young 
people  of  each  and  every  generation  to  acquire  the  ownership  of 
land  with  such  betterments  and  such  opportunities  for  living  and 
rearing  families  as  may  produce  ideal  Americans.  As  the  land 
must  change  operators  every  generation,  it  must  not  be  too  diffi- 
cult also  to  change  ownership. 

And  we  must  go  on  further  in  our  national  plan  than  to  make 
it  easy  to  acquire  ownership  in  land.  We  must  care  for  this 
land  as  a  national  asset  and  as  a  perpetual  obligation,  in  the  in- 
terest of  future  Americans.  Ownership  means  at  best  but  tem- 
porary control,  and  whoever  carries  in  his  pocket  a  deed  to  a 
portion  of  the  national  domain  is  in  reality  a  tenant  at  will,  and 
the  conditions  of  his  tenantry  should  be  such  decent  regard  to  the 
fertility  of  the  land  he  occupies  as  shall  insure  increasing,  not 
decreasing,  productivity.  In  no  other  way  can  the  lives  and  the 


PROBLEMS  OF  COUNTRY  LIFE         107 

fortunes,  in  no  other  way  can  the  domestic  peace  of  the  millions 
of  coming  Americans  be  guaranteed.  This  too  must  go  into  the 
policy. 

After  all,  who  is  The  Farmer?  And  where  is  the  land  which 
he  wants?  The  attempt  to  answer  these  questions  brings  us 
very  near  to  the  crux  of  the  situation.  Not  far  from  half  the 
acreage  of  our  better  lands  is  owned  by  one  group  and  operated 
by  another.  Who  then  is  The  Farmer?  When  two  families  are 
attempting  to  live  off  the  same  farm,  one  of  them  in  idleness,  or 
when  eleven  families  are  living  off  ten  farms,  with  whose  in- 
terests do  those  of  the  public  lie  ? 

In  one  county  of  Illinois,  twenty  per  cent,  of  the  farm  lands 
are  said  to  be  owned  by  men  who  have  never  seen  their  properties 
because  they  live  with  other  interests  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard, 
collecting  rent  through  agents  as  they  clip  coupons  from  stock 
certificates. 

It  is  said  that  the  estate  of  Lord  Scully  is  just  now  raising 
the  rents  of  some  hundreds  of  thousands  of  acres  of  our  best 
prairie  land  to  ten  dollars  an  acre,  or  about  two  thousand  per  cent, 
annually  of  the  original  cost.  Investments  and  betterments? 
Not  a  dollar!  For  the  agent  is  instructed  that  if  the  renter 
wants  a  house  or  a  pig  pen,  let  him  build  it.  No  investments  ex- 
cept in  additional  land.  Here  is  a  mare's  nest  for  hatching 
trouble,  and  the  tenants  are  already  reported  as  organizing  for 
resistance. 

Nobody  cares  how  large  is  the  farm  that  one  man  operates — 
economic  limitations  will  control,  and  the  larger  the  better  so 
far  as  the  public  is  concerned.  But  when  a  man  deliberately 
acquires  not  one  farm  but  ten  farms,  not  with  the  intention  of 
occupying  any  of  them  or  of  producing  anything,  then  the  public 
will  one  day  have  something  to  say  about  the  matter.  It  dare  not 
do  otherwise.  We  shall  always  have  renters,  but  shall  renting 
and  landlordism  become  typical  in  the  country  as  it  is  now  in 
the  cities?  If  so,  in  that  direction  lies  trouble. 

Specifically  the  public  wants  to  know  and  it  will  one  day  in- 
quire whether  capital  is  invested  in  land  from  a  desire  to  operate 
it  or  merely  from  a  wish  to  live  without  labor  and  at  the  same 
time  by  speculation  to  grow  rich  upon  the  rise  of  real  estate.  In 
no  other  form  are  investments  of  moderate  amounts  of  capital 


108  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

so  influential  for  weal  or  woe,  not  only  to  men  and  families,  but 
to  the  public  at  large,  as  are  investments  in  land.  For  this 
reason,  therefore,  in  one  way  or  another,  investments  in  land 
will  one  day  be  limited  as  to  amount  and  prescribed  as  to  condi- 
tions. In  no  other  way  can  private  ownership  be  preserved  from 
the  general  wreck  of  Bolshevism  certain  to  follow  a  bad  land 
policy. 

We  all  know  what  has  been  done  in  Russia  and  what  is  being 
done  in  Hungary.  We  know  that  England  has  been  forced  to 
control  land  ownership  by  limiting  the  conditions  of  inheritance, 
by  progressive  taxation,  and  by  applying  the  principle  of  excess 
profits.  Even  so,  one  of  the  points  insisted  upon  now  by  the 
British  Labor  Party  is  the  nationalization  of  land. 

Among  the  achievements  necessary  to  insure  the  proper  de- 
velopment of  American  agriculture  whether  from  a  private  or  a 
public  point  of  view,  the  following  at  least  are  of  sufficient 
significance  to  be  considered  as  fundamental  in  a  national  policy. 

First.  Subsidization  of  country  schools  to  an  extent  that  will 
insure  to  every  child  born  upon  the  farm  the  opportunity  of  a 
good  high  school  education  admitting  to  college,  with  choice  of 
differentiation  along  agricultural,  mechanical,  commercial,  scien- 
tific, or  literary  lines — and  this  without  leaving  the  father's 
roof  or  breaking  up  the  home  and  the  business. 

Second.  Public  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  farmer  is 
neither  a  capitalist  nor  a  laborer,  as  the  terms  are  understood  in 
the  commercial  world,  but  a  managing  operator  of  a  small  busi- 
ness of  which  the  home  and  the  family  are  integral  parts,  and 
therefore  entitled  to  stand  in  the  public  esteem  as  a  typical  demo- 
crat, not  as  a  "rube,"  or  even  as  an  eminently  useful  laborer 
that  should  be  contented  with  his  lot. 

Third.  Recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  American  farmer,  as 
a  typical  citizen  representing  our  largest  and  most  fundamental 
industry,  and  as  our  greatest  home-builder,  is  entitled  to  an  in- 
come comparable  with  his  labor,  his  investment,  and  his 
managerial  skill. 

Fourth.  The  assurance  of  this  income,  not  by  arbitrary  price 
fixing  in  defiance  of  the  economic  law  of  supply  and  demand,  not 
by  force,  but  by  conference  between  producer,  distributor,  and 
consumer. 


PROBLEMS  OF  COUNTRY  LIFE         109 

Fifth.  Requirement  by  law  of  minimum  housing  conditions 
upon  rented  farms,  such  conditions  to  be  maintained  under  a 
system  of  adequate  inspection. 

Sixth.  The  obligation  not  only  to  maintain  but  to  increase 
the  fertility  of  land,  this  obligation  to  be  equally  binding  upon 
landlord  and  tenant  and  enforced  by  public  license. 

Seventh.  Recognition  of  the  fact  that  as  between  the  owner 
and  the  operator  of  the  land,  the  sympathy  and  support  of  the 
public  should  be  with  the  operator. 

Eighth.  Recognition  of  the  fact  that  as  between  the  owner- 
operator,  the  tenant,  and  the  speculator,  the  sympathy  and  sup- 
port of  the  public  should  be  with  the  owner-operator  as  the 
typical  farmer. 

Ninth.  The  elimination  from  the  public  mind  of  the  idea 
that  tenantry  is  to  be  regarded  in  America  as  typical  land 
occupancy  or  as  the  ideal  road  to  ownership,  theories  for 
nationalization  and  mutualization  of  land  to  the  contrary  not- 
withstanding. 

Tenth.  The  appropriation  of  public  funds  for  financing 
young  men  in  prospective  ownership  as  soon  as  they  shall  have 
fully  established  a  reputation  for  thrift  and  shall  have  ac- 
cumulated say  ten  per  cent,  of  the  purchase  price  of  productive 
lands. 

Eleventh.  The  establishment  of  interest  rates  on  funds 
loaned  upon  land  for  home-building  purposes  that  shall  be  based 
upon  those  of  the  most  favorable  bond  issues,  not  upon  current 
banking  rates  for  short  term  loans — rates  that  cannot  be  generally 
realized  in  farming  and  that  ought  not  to  be  realized  in  the 
business  of  producing  the  staple  foods. 

Twelfth.  Discouragement  of  speculation  in  land,  by  means  of 
graduated  taxation  and  if  necessary  by  prohibiting  the  ac- 
cumulation of  large  numbers  of  farms  or  other  acquisition  of  land 
with  no  intention  of  occupancy ;  in  other  words,  the  absolute  dis- 
sociation of  real  estate  speculation  from  farming  and  from  the 
production  of  the  food  of  the  people.  If  we  are  to  retain  the 
principle  and  practice  of  private  ownership,  we  must  not  abuse 
the  privilege. 

Thirteenth.  Recognition  of  agriculture  in  all  its  phases  as 
a  matter  of  deep  public  concern,  whether  regarded  as  the  ma- 


110  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

chinery  for  the  production  of  the  food  of  the  people,  or  as  the 
means  of  providing  ideal  conditions  for  the  rearing  of  children. 

Fourteenth.  Finally,  the  determination  to  maintain  upon  the 
land  the  same  class  of  people  as  are  those  who  constitute  the  pre- 
vailing type  among  the  mass  of  American  citizens. 

Granted  that  these  or  some  similar  principles  are  not  only 
right  but  desirable,  how  may  we  best  set  about  their  realization 
in  the  form  of  a  working  National  Policy  ?  Upon  this  point  there 
is  interesting  material  for  reflection  in  the  methods  by  which 
we  have  arrived  at  other  convictions  that  may  fairly  be  called 
national. 

Second  only  to  the  need  of  a  new  national  policy  regarding 
any  important  matter  is  the  method  by  which  in  a  democracy 
such  new  policy  may  be  elqyated  from  the  plane  of  discussion 
into  the  realm  of  conviction  and  finally  established  as  a  per- 
manent part  of  our  national  habit  of  thought.  In  this  connection 
it  is  both  interesting  and  profitable  to  note  with  some  care  the 
various  and  diverse  processes  by  which  our  own  particular  and 
characteristic  national  policies  have  not  only  come  into  being 
but  have  developed  sufficient  strength  to  determine  and  to  domi- 
nate the  everyday  life  of  the  people. 

For  example,  our  fundamental  doctrine  that  all  men  are  equal 
in  respect  to  their  right  of  life  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  was 
declared  and  formally^  adopted  in  a  document  published  to  the 
world. 


WHO  IS  THE  FARMER1 

A.   M.    SIMONS 

IF  we  are  to  select  any  particular  section  or  type,  which  shall 
it  be?  Shall  it  be  the  New  England  Yankee  wresting  from  his 
stumpy  and  rocky  soil  a  niggard  subsistence  and  swapping  prod- 
ucts with  his  neighbors?  If  so,  when  we  seek  him  in  his  native 
states  we  shall  find  him  displaced  by  French  Canadians,  Italians 
and  Irish  immigrants.  If  we  follow  up  his  children  we  shall 
hardly  recognize  them  in  the  tillers  of  the  broad  prairies  of  the 

i  Adapted  from  "The  American  Farmer,"  p.  15,  Kerr,  Chicago.  (Copy- 
right holder  A.  M.  Simons.) 


PROBLEMS  OF  COUNTRY  LIFE  111 

West  with  a  mind  and  hospitality  as  wide  and  as  fertile  as  the 
teeming  soil  beneath  their  feet.  OF  is  the  American  farmer 
best  typified  by  the  early  pioneer, — that  strange  combination  of 
hunter,  fisher,  lumberman,  farmer,  trapper  and  scout,  now  well- 
nigh  extinct,  but  to  whom  we  owe  Lincoln,  the  best  and  most 
typical  American  citizen?  Or  shall  we  find  him  in  the  South, 
amid  the  cotton,  rice  and  sugar  plantations?  And  if  here,  is  he 
white  or  black — a  member  of  ante-bellum  aristocracy  or  ''poor 
white  trash"?  If  purity  of  American  blood  is  to  be  the  test,  the 
latter  will  demand  first  consideration,  for  in  few  places  is  the 
foreign  strain  less  present  than  among  the  moonshining,  feud- 
fighting  mountaineers  of  Kentucky  and  the  Carolinas.  Is  he  cow- 
boy, rancher  or  sheep  farmer  on  the  Western  plains?  Or  is  the 
typical  American  farmer  the  resident  of  the  great  arid  irrigated 
belt,  a  dependent  upon  a  great  water  company,  raising  almost 
fabulous  crops  and  receiving  a  beggarly  return?  Or  is  he  the 
Slav,  or  Italian,  or  Dutch  truck  farmer  of  the  city  suburb,  work- 
ing beneath  glass  and  aided  by  steam  and  electricity  ?  Or  shall 
we  find  him  upon  the  dairy  and  stock  farms  of  Illinois,  Iowa  and 
Wisconsin?  Or  is  he  a  fruit  farmer,  and  if  so  is  he  in  tropic  or 
temperate  climes?  Is  it  all  of  these,  or  none,  or  part  of  each,  or 
a  composite  picture  of  the  whole  that  makes  up  the  American 
fanner  ? 


THE  POINT  OF  VIEW  IN  COMPARISONS  OF  CITY  AND 
COUNTRY  CONDITIONS1 

KENYON   L.    BUTTERFIELD 

IN  view  of  this  apparent  change  in  the  attitude  of  people 
toward  the  farm  problem,  it  may  not  be  idle  to  suggest  some 
possible  errors  that  should  be  avoided  when  we  are  thinking  of 
rural  society.  The  student  will  doubtless  approach  his  prob- 
lem fortified  against  some  misconceptions — he  probably  has 
thoughtfully  established  his  view  point.  But  the  average  per- 
son in  the  city  is  likely  to  call  up  the  image  of  his  ancestral  home 

i  Adapted  from  "Chapters  in  Rural  Progress,"  pp.  4-5.  ( Copyright  by 
University  Chicago  Press,  1907.) 


112  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  a  generation  ago,  if  he  were  born  in  the  country,  or,  if  not, 
to  draw  upon  his  observation  made  upon  some  summer  vacation 
or  on  casual  business  trips  into  the  interior.  Or  he  takes  his 
picture  from  '  *  Shore  Acres ' '  and  the  ' '  Old  Homestead. ' '  In  any 
case  it  is  not  improbable  that  the  image  may  be  faulty  and  as  a 
consequence  his  appreciation  of  present  conditions  wholly  inade- 
quate. Let  us  consider  some  of  these  possible  sources  of  mis- 
conception. 

In  the  first  place  it  is  not  fair  to  compare  the  country  life  as 
a  whole  with  the  best  city  conditions.  This  is  often  done.  The 
observer  usually  has  education,  culture,  leisure,  the  experience 
of  travel,  more  or  less  wealth;  his  acquaintance  is  mostly  with 
people  of  like  attainments.  When  he  fails  to  find  a  rural  en- 
vironment that  corresponds  in  some  degree  to  his  own  and  that 
of  his  friends,  he  is  quick  to  conclude  that  the  country  has  noth- 
ing to  offer  him,  that  only  the  city  ministers  to  the  higher  wants 
of  man.  He  forgets  that  he  is  one  of  a  thousand  in  the  city, 
and  does  not  represent  average  city  life.  He  fails  to  compare 
the  average  country  conditions  with  the  average  city  conditions, 
manifestly  the  only  fair  basis  for  comparison.  Or  he  may  err 
still  more  grievously.  He  may  set  opposite  each  other  the  worst 
country  conditions  and  the  better  city  conditions.  He  ought  in 
all  justice  to  balance  country  slum  with  the  city  slum ;  and  cer- 
tainly so  if  he  insists  on  trying  to  find  palaces,  great  libraries, 
eloquent  preachers,  theaters,  and  rapid  transit  in  rural  com- 
munities. City  life  goes  to  extremes ;  country  life,  while  varied, 
is  more  even.  In  the  country  there  is  little  of  large  wealth, 
luxury,  and  ease;  little  also  of  extreme  poverty,  reeking  crime, 
unutterable  filth,  moral  sewage.  Farmers  are  essentially  a  mid- 
dle class  and  no  comparison  is  fair  that  does  not  keep  this  fact 
ever  in  mind. 

We  sometimes  hear  the  expression,  ' '  Country  life  is  so  barren ; 
that  to  me  is  its  most  discouraging  aspect."  Much  country  life 
is  barren ;  but  much  more  of  it  is  only  relatively  and  not  essen- 
tially so.  We  must  admit  that  civilization  is  at  least  partially 
veneer;  polish  does  wonders  for  the  appearance  of  folks  as  well 
as  of  furniture.  But  while  the  beauty  of  ''heart  of  oak"  is 
enhanced  by  its  "finish,"  its  utility  is  not  destroyed  by  a  failure 


PROBLEMS  OF  COUNTRY  LIFE         113 

to  polish  it.  Now,  much  of  the  so-called  barrenness  of  country 
life  is*  the  oak  minus  the  polish.  We  come  to  regard  polish  as 
essential;  it  is  only  relative.  And  not  only  may  we  apply  the 
wrong  standard  to  our  situation,  but  our  eyes  may  deceive  us. 
To  the  uninitiated  a  clod  of  dry  earth  is  the  most  unpromising 
of  objects — it  is  cousin  to  the  stone  and  the  type  of  barrenness. 
But  to  the  elect  it  is  pregnant  with  the  possibilities  of  seed-time 
and  harvest,  of  a  full  fruitage,  of  abundance  and  content  for 
man  and  beast.  And  there  is  many  a  farm  home,  plain  to  the 
extreme,  devoid  of  the  veneer,  a  home  that  to  the  man  of  the 
town  seems  lacking  in  all  the  things  that  season  life,  but  a  home 
which  virtue,  intelligence,  thrift,  and  courage  transform  into  a 
garden  of  roses  and  a  type  of  heaven.  I  do  not  justify  neglect 
of  the  finer  material  things  of  life,  nor  plead  for  drab  and 
homespun  as  passports  to  the  courts  of  excellence;  but  I  insist 
that  plainness,  simple  living,  absence  of  luxury,  lack  of  polish 
that  may  be  met  with  in  the  country,  do  not  necessarily  accom- 
pany a  condition  barren  of  the  essentials  of  the  higher  life. 

Sometimes  rural  communities  are  ridiculed  because  of  the 
trivial  nature  of  their  gossip,  interests  and  ambitions.  There 
may  be  some  justice  in  the  criticism,  though  the  situation  is 
pathetic  rather  than  humorous.  But  is  the  charge  wholly  just? 
In  comparing  country  with  town  we  are  comparing  two  environ- 
ments; necessarily,  therefore,  objects  of  gossip,  interests,  and 
ambitions  differ  therein.  We  expect  that.  It  is  no  criticism  to 
assert  that  fact.  The  test  is  not  that  of  an  existing  difference, 
but  of  an  essential  quality.  Is  not  Ben  Bolt's  new  top  buggy 
as  legitimate  a  topic  for  discussion  as  is  John  Arthur  Smythe's 
new  automobile  ?  Does  not  the  price  of  wheat  mean  as  much 
to  the  hard-working  grower  as  to  the  banker  who  may  never 
see  a  grain  of  it?  May  not  the  grove  at  Turtle  Lake  yield  as 
keen  enjoyment  as  do  the  continental  forests?  Is  the  ambition 
to  own  a  fine  farm  more  ignoble  than  the  desire  to  own  shares  in 
a  copper  mine?  It  really  does  not  matter  so  much  what  one 
gossips  about  or  what  one's  delights  are  or  what  the  carvings  on 
the  rungs  of  ambition's  ladder;  the  vital  question  is  the  effect 
of  these  things  on  character.  Do  they  stunt  or  encourage  the 
inner  life?  It  must  be  admitted  that  country  people  do  not  al- 


114  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

ways  accept  their  environing  opportunities  for  enjoying  the 
higher  life  of  mind  and  heart.  But  do  they  differ  in  this  respect 
from  their  cousins  of  the  town  ? 

SOLDIER  SETTLEMENTS  IN  ENGLISH-SPEAKING 
COUNTRIES  1 

ELWOOD    MEAD 

ALL  English-speaking  countries  except  the  United  States  have 
passed  special  soldier  settlement  legislation  and  made  appropria- 
tions therefor.  Where  good  free  land  exists  he  is  usually  given 
assistance  in  the  individual  purchase  of  private  land,  or  such 
private  land  is  purchased  by  the  State  in  blocks.  In  countries 
like  England,  New  Zealand,  Victoria,  and  New  South  Wales  it 
is  largely  a  question  of  resuming  land. 

When  land-settlement  boards  do  not  already  exist  they  have 
had  to  be  created,  except  in  the  case  of  Ontario  and  some  of  the 
other  Canadian  Provinces,  which  are  using  their  minister  of 
lands,  their  agricultural,  and  forestry  departments  for  this 
purpose. 

Handling  applications  and  placing  soldiers  is  largely  decen- 
tralized and  in  the  hands  of  voluntary  local  committees. 

The  English  and  Canadian  method  of  settlement  is  to  estab- 
lish central  farms  on  which  to  try  out  crops,  to  employ  and  train 
settlers,  stock  them  with  animals  and  implements  for  the  use  of 
the  settlers,  and  about  these  farms  to  lay  out  farm  blocks  of 
varying  dimensions.  The  Australian  plan  is  to  follow  the  policy 
of  closer  settlement  already  laid  down  and  so  successfully 
prosecuted. 

Explicit  data  concerning  total  appropriations  are  not  avail- 
able. The  usual  method  is  to  start  the  work  with  a  small  appro- 
priation and  to  add  to  it  as  required.  In  the  case  of  Canadian 
Provinces  and  the  Dominion,  funds  come  from  an  appropriation 
for  general  development,  probably  derived  from  taxation;  in 
England  it  is  a  disbursement  from  the  treasury;  in  New  Zea- 
land and  Australia  the  funds  are  derived  wholly  from  the  sale 
of  bonds  in  the  London  market. 

i  Adapted  from  Bulletin.  Department  of  the  Interior,  U.  S.  Reclamation 
Service  (1919). 


PROBLEMS  OF  COUNTRY  LIFE         115 

In  the  two  countries  where  a  Federal  Government  exists, 
namely,  Canada  and  Australia,  tentative  steps  have  been  taken 
toward  working  out  a  cooperative  plan  the  general  nature  of 
which  is  for  the  general  Government  to  supply  the  land  and  to 
supervise  its  division,  and  maybe  control.  A  general  board  has 
been  appointed  in  each  case  and  on  which  each  of  the  states  or 
provinces  is  represented.  Undoubtedly  when  the  period  of  de- 
mobilization approaches  this  plan  in  the  case  of  Canada  and  Aus- 
tralia will  be  carried  out  in  great  detail. 

Aid  to  the  soldier  takes  a  variety  of  forms.  There  are,  first, 
the  allowances  which  are  given  a  soldier  for  himself  and  family 
in  the  probationary  period  of  working  and  beginning  of  expe- 
rience; under  this  head  might  be  mentioned  transportation 
which  all  of  the  countries  offer  the  soldiers  when  they  are  travel- 
ing to  training  stations  or  to  the  land ;  second,  either  the  giving 
of  land  or  the  pricing  it  to  the  soldier  at  the  cost  of  purchase 
and  subdivision;  third,  the  supplying  of  advice,  guidance  and 
instructions  by  all  countries;  fourth,  the  supply  of  grading,  farm 
tools  and  sometimes  farm  animals  free  or  at  cost  (under  this 
head  may  be  mentioned  the  supply  of  seeds  and  fertilizers)  ; 
fifth,  credit  advances  for  the  taking  up  of  mortgages  and  incum- 
brances,  for  clearing,  leveling,  and  ditching  of  lands,  for  erec- 
tion of  fences,  buildings,  barns  and  houses,  for  the  building  of 
homes;  sixth,  assistance  in  the  organization  of  cooperative  buy- 
ing and  selling  associations  and  the  giving  of  whatever  aid  the 
State  Governments  ought  to  give  in  this  direction. 

In  every  instance  the  payments  for  the  purchase  of  the  land 
or  for  the  reimbursement  to  the  State  for  advances  are  stretched 
over  a  long  period  of  time.  The  period  of  payment  varies  from 
20  years,  as  in  the  case  of  Ontario,  to  36Vs>  years,  which  is  the 
case  in  the  Australian  States.  Advances  for  stock  and  develop- 
ments are  repayable  in  from  10  to  25  years.  The  interest 
charged  is  seldom  more  than  %  cent  more  than  the  interest  paid 
on  public  securities. 

In  Canada  freehold  rights  prevail  In  England  the  perpetual 
lease  predominates.  In  New  Zealand  both  the  lease  and  .the 
freehold  are  given.  In  Australia  some  of  the  States,  such  as 
New  South  Wales,  South  Australia,  and  Queensland,  do  not 
give  a  freehold  title.  The  occupier  pays  a  rent- of  about  l1/^  per 


116  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

cent,  of  the  capital  value  of  the  land  and  receives  a  perpetual 
lease  which  is  inheritable  and,  under  certain  restrictions,  trans- 
ferable. The  other  States  offer  a  freehold  title  or  a  lease.  The 
governments  of  all  these  countries-  are  not  inclined  to  part  with 
their  grazing  lands  or  lands  that  are  suitable  for  further  sub- 
divisions. They  are  usually  leased  for  short  or  long  terms. 

In  nearly  all  cases,  while  the  soldier  is  not  legally  required  to 
maintain  a  residence,  he  can  not  lease  his  land  or  transfer  it 
within  a  stated  period  and  he  can  not  meet  his  payments  on  the 
advances  received  unless  he  is  giving  his  whole  attention  to  his 
land.  Residence,  therefore,  is  practically  assured. 

The  selection  of  soldiers  and  the  advice  they  receive  is  largely 
in  the  hands  of  local  committees  in  the  case  of  Canada,  England, 
and  Australia.  Such  local  committees  are  usually  expected  to 
give  their  advice  in  the  selection  of  lands  to  be  purchased  by 
the  State. 

Some  training  of  the  soldier  in  agriculture,  and  some  practi- 
cal farm  experience  is  always  expected.  Such  training  and  ex- 
perience are  obtainable  from  three  sources:  Employment  on 
farms,  from  agricultural  colleges,  or  from  farms  associated  with 
the  colony  enterprise. 

The  legislative  acts  in  all  countries  are  practically  complete. 
The  organization  for  the  administration  of  the  acts  is  largely 
completed.  Some  private  lands  have  been  purchased  and  public 
lands  set  aside  by  all  the  English-speaking  countries. 

It  is  not  possible  at  this  time  to  give  a  table  of  the  amount  of 
land  so  acquired. 


THE  FARMER  IN  RELATION  TO  THE  WELFARE 
OF  THE  WHOLE  COUNTRY1 

THEODORE  ROOSEVELT 

THERE  is  but  one  person  whose  welfare  is  as  vital  to  the  wel- 
fare of  the  whole  county  as  is  that  of  the  wage-worker  who  does 
manual  labor ;  and  that  is  the  tiller  of  the  soil — the  farmer.  If 
there  is  one  lesson  taught  by  history  it  is  that  the  permanent 

iFrom  "The  Man  Who  Works  With  His  Hands,"  U.  S.  D.  /»,.,'  Office  of 
Secretary,  Circ.  24.  1912. 


PROBLEMS  OF  COUNTRY  LIFE         117 

greatness  of  any  State  must  ultimately  depend  more  upon  the 
character  of  its  country  population  than  upon  anything  else. 
No  growth  of  cities,  no  growth  of  wealth,  can  make  up  for  a 
loss  in  either  the  number  or  the  character  of  the  farming  popula- 
tion. In  the  United  States  more  than  in  almost  any  other  coun- 
try we  should  realize  this  and  should  prize  our  country  popula- 
tion. When  this  Nation  began  its  independent  existence  it  was 
as  a  Nation  of  farmers.  The  towns  were  small  and  were  for  the 
most  part  mere  sea-coast  trading  and  fishing  ports.  The  chief 
industry  of  the  country  was  agriculture,  and  the  ordinary  citizen 
was  in  some  way  connected  with  it.  In  every  great  crisis  of  the 
past  a  peculiar  dependence  has  had  to  be  placed  upon  the  farm- 
ing population ;  and  this  dependence  has  hitherto  been  justified. 
But  it  can  not  be  justified  in  the  future  if  agriculture  is  per- 
mitted to  sink  in  the  scale  as  compared  with  other  employments. 
We  can  not  afford  to  lose  that  preeminently  typical  American, 
the  farmer  who  owns  his  own  farm. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Antrim,  Ernest  I.     Fifty  Million  Strong.     Pioneer  Press,  Van  Wert, 

0.,  1916. 

Anderson,  W.  L.     The  Country  Town.     Baker,  N.  Y.,  190G. 
Annals  of  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social  Science,  Vol.  40, 

March,  1912. 

Bailey,  L.  H.     The  Country  Life  Movement.     Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1911. 
Cyclopedia   of  American  Agric.,  Vol.   IV.     Farm  and   Community, 

Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1909. 

The  State  and  the  Farmer,  Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1908. 
Bookwalter,  J.  W.     Rural  vs.  Urban,  Knickerbocker,  N.  Y.,  1910. 
Buck,   S.   J.     The   Granger  Movement.     Harvard  Univ.   Press,   Cam- 
bridge, 1913. 
Butterfield,  K.  L.     Chapters  in  Rural  Progress.     University  of  Chicago 

Press,  Chicago,  1907. 

Farmer  and  the  New  Day,  Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1919. 
Carver,  T.  N.     Principles  of  Rural  Economics,  Ginn,  Boston,  1911. 
Carver,  T.  N.     Selected  Readings  in  Rural  Economics.     Ginn,  Boston, 

1916. 

Country  Life  Commission  (Report).     Sturgis,  N.  Y.,  1909. 
Davenport,  E.     Education  for  Efficiency.     Heath,  Boston,  1909. 
Douglass,  Harlan  Paul.     The  Little  Town.     Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1919. 
Fiske,  G.  W.     The  Challenge  of  the  Country.     Association  Press,  N. 

Y.,  1912. 

Gillette,  John  M.  Constructive  Rural  Sociology.  Sturgis,  N.  Y.,  1912. 
Groves,  Ernest  R,  Rural  Problems  of  To-day.  Association  Press,  N. 

Y.,  1918. 


118  9         RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Hart,  J.  K.  Educational  Resources  of  Village  and  Rural  Communi- 
ties. Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1913. 

Herrick,  M.  T.  Rural  Credits,  Land  and  Cooperative.  Appleton,  N. 
Y.,  1914. 

Howe,  Fred.     The  Land  and  the  Soldier.     Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  1919. 

Morman,  J.  B.     Rural  Credits.     Macrnillan,  N.  Y.,  1915. 

Nourse,  E.  G.  Agricultural  Economics.  The  Univ.  Chicago  Press, 
1916. 

Plunkett,  Sir  Horace.  The  Rural  Life  Problem  of  the  United  States. 
Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1910. 

Proceedings  of  the  First  National  Country  Life  Conference.  Balti- 
more, 1919.  Pub.  by  Secy.  Natl.  Country  Life  Association,  Ith- 
aca, N.  Y. 

Proceedings  of  the  Natl.  Conference  of  Social  Work,  Pittsburgh,  1917, 
315  Plymouth  Court,  Chicago,  111. 

Roberston,  J.  W.  Conservation  of  Life  in  Rural  Districts.  Assoc. 
Press,  N.  Y.,  1911. 

Ross,  E.  A.  Folk  Depletion  as  a  Cause  of  Rural  Decline.  Pub.  Am. 
Sociological  Society  11 :  21-30,  1916. 

Sociology  of  Rural  Life.     American  Sociological  Society,  Vol.  XI,  1916. 

Taylor,  H.  C.     Agricultural  Economics.     Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1912. 

Vincent,  Geo.  E.  Countryside  and  Nation.  Pub.  Am.  Sociological 
Society,  11 : 1-11,  1916. 

Vogt,  Paul  L.  Introduction  to  Rural  Sociology.  Appleton,  N.  Y., 
1917. 

Weld,  L.  D.  H.  Marketing  of  Farm  Products.  Macmillan,  N.  Y., 
1916. 

Wilson,  W.  H.     Evolution  of  the  Country  Community.     Pilgrim,  Bos- 
ton, 1912. 
Country  versus  City.     Pub.  Am.  Sociological  Soc.,  11:12-20,  1916. 


CHAPTER  VI 
SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS 

A.    COOPERATION 
THE  MORAL  BASIS  OF  COOPERATION  1 

THOMAS   N.    CARVER 

So  far  as  I  know,  everybody  agrees  that  cooperation  would 
be  a  good  thing.  Nevertheless,  there  is  little  cooperation  as  yet. 
If  we  all  agree  that  it  is  a  good  thing,  why  do  we  not  cooperate  ? 
This  is  a  question  which  has  puzzled  many  of  us.  I  believe  I 
have  one  or  two  suggestions  which  go  pretty  nearly  to  the  root 
of  the  matter.  The  causes  of  this  lack  of  cooperation  are  funda- 
mentally moral,  and  we  must  attack  the  problem  at  this  point 
before  we  can  make  much  progress.  All  problems  hang  in  clus- 
ters. You  can't  separate  from  our  moral  problems  the  eco- 
nomic problems  that  all  hang  on  the  same  stem.  I  believe  if  you 
will  look  about  your  own  neighborhood  you  will  find  that  if  you 
have  a  neighbor  who  is  very  careful  about  his  own  rights  and 
your  obligations,  he  is  not  an  easy  neighbor  to  work  with. 
These  two  things  mean  the  same.  His  rights  are  your  obliga- 
tions, his  obligations  are  your  rights.  They  are  different  names 
for  the  same  thing,  different  sides  for  the  same  shield.  Suppose 
3'ou  are  the  same  way.  You  two  will  never  get  along  together 
and  work  together  in  this  world.  A  whole  community  made  up 
of  people  of  this  kind  will  never  cooperate.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  your  neighbor  is  very  careful  of  his  obligations  and  your 
rights,  he  is  easy  to  get  along  with.  And  if  you  are  very  care- 
ful of  your  obligations  and  his  rights,  you  are  also  easy  to  get 
along  with.  You  two  can  work  together  peaceably  and  amicably. 
A  whole  neighborhood  made  up  of  people  of  that  kind  can  work 
together  and  cooperate.  Here  is  some  work  for  the  moral  and 
religious  agencies. 

i  Adapted  from  "Proceedings  of  National  Farmers'  Congress,"  p.  191. 

119 


120  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

There  is  a  story  of  an  aged  savage  who,  after  having  lived  in 
civilized  communities  most  of  his  life,  returned  in  his  old  age 
to  his  native  tribe,  saying  that  he  had  tried  civilization  for  forty 
years  and  it  wasn't  worth  the  trouble.  Much  of  the  philosophy 
of  civilization  is  summed  up  in  that  remark.  Civilization  con- 
sists largely  in  making  trouble.  Genius,  in  the  individual,  has 
been  said  to  consist  in  the  capacity  for  taking  pains  in  one's 
work.  It  is  this  capacity  which  marks  the  superior  race  as  well 
as  the  superior  individual.  They  who  find  the  taking  of  pains 
too  burdensome  to  be  borne,  will  naturally  decide  that  civiliza- 
tion is  not  worth  the  trouble.  They  who  do  not  find  it  so  very 
burdensome  to  take  pains,  will  naturally  decide  that  civilization 
is  worth  the  trouble,  and  will  therefore  become  civilized. 

This  principle  applies  to  every  stage  of  civilization  and  prog- 
ress. The  greatest  advancement  is  made  by  those  who  are  cap- 
able of  taking  the  greatest  pains.  It  applies  especially  to  agri- 
cultural progress.  It  is  more  trouble  to  select  than  not  to  select 
seed,  and  to  select  it  in  the  field  than  in  the  bin.  It  is  more 
trouble  to  test  cows  than  to  not  test  them,  to  keep  accounts  than 
not  to  keep  them,  to  diversify  or  rotate  crops  than  not  to  diver- 
sify or  rotate,  to  mix  fertilizers  intelligently  than  to  buy  them 
already  mixed,  to  cooperate  with  one's  pig-headed  neighbors, 
especially  if  he  himself  is  a  little  pig-headed,  than  to  go  to  it 
alone.  It  is  also  more  profitable.  In  all  these  and  a  multitude 
of  other  cases  it  is  found  that  it  pays  to  take  trouble. 

Suppose  we  can  secure  a  higher  development  of  these  two 
moral  qualities:  first,  the  deep  sense  of  loyalty  and  obligation 
to  the  neighborhood;  and  second,  the  willingness  and  capacity 
for  taking  trouble.  Then  I  believe  the  cooperative  movement 
among  farmers  would  make  rapid  headway. 

FARMERS'  COOPERATIVE  EXCHANGES1 

ALEXANDER  E.    CANCE 

WITHIN  the  past  few  years  very  much  has  been  said  and  writ- 
ten about  the  unprofitableness  of  agriculture,  and  on  the  other 

i  Adapted  from  Bulletin  of  the  Extension  Service,  Massachusetts  Agricul- 
tural College,  Amherst,  1914. 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  121 

hand  much  complaint  has  been  made  of  the  high  cost  of  living 
and  the  desperate  straits  of  the  consumer.  Many  causes  have 
been  advanced  to  account  for  this  state  of  affairs,  but  probably 
none  more  frequently  than  the  somewhat  vague  accusation  that 
the  middlemen  take  all  the  profits. 

It  is  asserted  that  the  farmer  must  take  what  he  is  offered  for 
his  products  and  pay  what  he  is  asked  for  his  supplies  and  equip- 
ment— that  he  fixes  the  price  neither  of  what  he  sells  nor  what 
he  buys.  In  a  general  way  and  considering  farmers  individ- 
ually, this  is  undoubtedly  true.  When  it  is  said  that  this  is  due 
to  the  machinations  of  predatory  middlemen  the  statement  needs 
some  qualifications. 

In  the  main,  the  system  of  middlemen  has  arisen  and  developed 
with  the  growth  of  farming  for  the  market.  As  soon  as  farmers 
began  to  give  up  producing  solely  for  themselves  and  to  raise 
crops  to  sell,  the  question  of  means  of  disposal  of  crops  became 
very  important.  One  of  the  first  middlemen  was  the  local 
buyer,  often  the  storekeeper,  who  took  the  farmer's  produce, 
sold  him  dry  goods,  groceries  and  supplies,  and  in  his  turn 
passed  the  corn  and  eggs,  feathers  and  honey,  on  to  the  user  or 
manufacturer. 

But  division  of  occupations  and  industries  resulting  in  the 
growth  of  cities  and  the  concentration  of  population  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  call  for  more  raw  materials  of  agriculture  on  the 
other,  gradually  separated  the  countryman  from  the  urban 
dweller  geographically,  commercially  and  socially.  Commer- 
cially the  division  meant  that  the  farmer  must  devote  himself 
to  growing  crops  and  producing  raw  materials  of  food  and 
clothing,  that  the  manufacturer  and  artisan  give  themselves  up 
to  their  vocations;  hence  of  necessity  there  grew  up  a  lot  of 
marketmen,  transporters,  storage  men,  purveyors  and  the  like, 
who  made  a  business  of  getting  goods  from  the  farmer  to  the 
consumer  and  from  the  manufacturer  to  the  farmer. 

This  body  of  men  holds  a  strategic  position  which  has  been 
strengthened  by  combination,  capital  investments,  natural  and 
trade  monopolies,  and  a  beneficent  Congress.  It  is  not  difficult 
to  understand  that  they  are  powerful  because  they  have  by 
organization  and  superior  bargaining  ability  come  to  dominate 


122  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

almost  the  entire  trade  in  raw  materials  and  manufactured 
products. 

It  is  only  natural  that  the  middlemen  should  endeavor  to  in- 
crease their  gains  by  buying  cheap  and  selling  dear,  that  they 
should  specialize  and  multiply  as  the  wants  of  consumers  grow 
and  the  sources  of  supplies  become  more  and  more  distant.  The 
widening  gap  between  the  farmer  and  the  users  of  the  farmer's 
product  makes  a  place  for  a  large  number  of  go-betweens. 

Aside  from  the  fact  that  these  men  are  specialists  in  their 
various  activities,  that  they  furnish  the  money  to  store  and 
distribute  the  products  of  producers,  to  find  markets  and  facili- 
tate trade,  they  have  in  many  instances  taken  over  all  the  mar- 
keting activities  of  the  farmer.  They  often  purchase  apples 
upon  the  tree,  pick  them,  grade  them,  pack  them  and  ship  them, 
severing  all  connection  between  the  farmer  and  his  product  be- 
fore his  fruit  is  harvested.  Differing  somewhat  in  degree,  the 
same  may  in  many  instances  be  said  of  tobacco,  live  stock,  poul- 
try, eggs,  potatoes,  grain,  etc.  The  farmer  buys  his  fertilizer 
and  feed  prepared,  mixed,  bagged,  labeled,  delivered  by  the  re- 
tail dealer  into  his  wagon  and  paid  for  by  the  dealer,  who  gives 
the  farmer  credit.  The  farmer  is  a  producer  of  goods,  nothing 
more.  Possibly  that  is  sufficient,  but  if  so,  he  should  be  an  in- 
telligent producer,  purchasing  shrewdly  and  selling  his  produce 
at  a  reasonable  margin  of  profit. 

Now  it  is  very  evident  that  farm  methods  are  improving;  the 
farmer  is  a  better  producer  than  he  was  years  ago.  But  it  is 
also  evident  that  much  of  the  advantage  he  has  gained  through 
education,  applied  science,  government  aid,  better  equipment 
and  more  intelligent  practice,  has  been  altogether  lost  because 
he  has  not  been  able  to  dispose  of  his  crop  or  to  buy  his  supplies 
and  equipments  advantageously. 

In  some  agricultural  industries  in  the  United  States  and  al- 
most everywhere  in  Europe,  farmers  have  secured  great  financial 
advantages  and  acquired  a  keen  sense  of  business  by  combining 
their  interests,  by  buying  and  selling  together.  In  some  coun- 
tries the  results  of  cooperative  business  methods  are  marvelous. 
Denmark  has  become  rich  and  world-famous,  and  little  Ireland, 
for  years  known  as  the  very  poorest  agricultural  country  in  Eu- 
rope, has  made  remarkable  progress,  simply  because  the  farmers 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  123 

of  these  countries  have  learned  to  sell  their  products  in  a  business- 
like way  and  buy  their  agricultural  requirements  together.  They 
give  their  attention  to  production  but  they  also  see  to  it  that 
their  products  are  sold  intelligently  and  wisely  by  their  own 
paid  agents.  The  farmer  cannot  very  well  learn  all  there  is 
to  know  about  any  market  but  a  hundred  farmers  can  hire  a 
marketing  expert  to  handle  their  products  and  can  afford  to 
pay  him  a  good  salary  out  of  increased  returns  that  otherwise 
would  go  to  a  host  of  middlemen. 

The  market  of  to-day  demands  two  or  three  very  simple  things 
of  the  producer.  One  of  the  first  and  simplest  is  that  the  quality 
of  the  product  be  dependable.  The  market  desires  such  products 
as  are  of  known  quality,  whether  this  quality  be  first,  second 
or  third.  One  great  reason  why  farmers  do  not  receive  the 
highest  price  for  their  crops  is  that  they  have  not  learned  to  ship 
to  the  market  uniform  grades  or  qualities.  When,  for  example, 
a  barrel  of  apples  is  packed  it  is  likely  to  contain  apples  of  the 
first  grade,  second  grade  and  culls;  perhaps  a  large  part  of  the 
barrel  cannot  be  used  at  all.  The  second  barrel  may  be  just  like 
the  first  or  it  may  be  something  very  different. 

In  the  second  place,  the  market  demands  a  neat  and  uniform 
package.  Every  marketman  in  the  country  complains  of  the 
fact  that  farmers  have  little  real  business  sense  in  the  matter  of 
putting  up  their  products  in  packages.  One  finds  potatoes  com- 
ing into  the  market  some  in  barrels,  some  in  boxes,  some  in  bags, 
some  in  other  packages  of  every  description  and  degree  of  de- 
crepitude. A  uniform,  neat  and  tasty  package  suited  to  the 
commodity  which  it  contains  is  a  great  factor  in  increasing  the 
price  of  the  product. 

In  the  third  place,  the  market  wants  products  shipped  reg- 
ularly in  quantities  sufficient  to  supply  the  demand.  It  is  no 
little  matter  to  the  marketman  that  he  can  get  all  the  potatoes 
he  wants  one  week  and  cannot  get  any  the  next.  What  he  de- 
sires is,  perhaps,  a  carload  of  potatoes  every  other  day  for  six 
months  and  a  carload  every  three  days  for  the  other  six  months. 
At  any  rate,  it  is  essential  that  he  receive  his  shipments  regularly 
from  the  shipper. 

These  simple  essentials — dependable  goods,  packed  uniformly 
and  neatly,  well  graded,  shipped  regularly  in  sufficient  quantities 


124  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

to  meet  the  demand,  can  hardly  be  supplied  by  the  small  indi- 
vidual farmer ;  and  because  they  cannot  be  supplied  in  that  way, 
the  marketman  and  consumer  naturally  go  to  the  jobber  to  get 
their  goods.  The  jobber  pays  the  farmer  as  small  a  price  as 
he  can  and  charges  the  consumer  as  high  a  price  as  he  can  for 
his  costly  services  of  packing,  grading  and  distributing  the  prod- 
uct uniformly. 

European  farmers  in  England,  Ireland,  Denmark  and  other 
countries  found  themselves  confronted  with  the  same  marketing 
conditions  which  the  farmers  of  the  United  States  have  found. 
They  struggled  with  it  just  as  the  farmers  of  the  United  States 
are  struggling,  but  unlike  the  majority  of  the  farmers  of  the 
United  States,  they  struggled  to  some  effect.  The  farmers  of 
the  Old  World  are  small  farmers.  Not  many  of  them  produce 
more  than  a  mere  handful  of  products  of  any  one  sort.  Some  of 
them  found  themselves  with  no  home  market  and  were  obliged 
to  ship  their  products  across  the  seas  into  foreign  countries. 
Some  of  them  found  an  organized  opposition  to  the  sale  of  their 
goods  in  other  countries.  Nevertheless,  the  European  farmers 
in  the  countries  mentioned  found  the  way  out  by  organizing 
themselves  into  small  cooperative  selling  associations.  By  pool- 
ing their  products  they  were  able  to  facilitate  their  marketing 
because,  in  the  first  place,  they  were  able  to  pack  uniformly, 
supply  the  market  sufficiently  and  regularly,  and  because  of  the 
supply  which  they  controlled,  they  were  able  to  meet  success- 
fully organized  opposition  to  their  interests. 

No  other  poultry  in  the  world  is  packed  as  well  as  Danish 
poultry;  no  other  eggs  are  graded  as  well  as  Danish  eggs;  there 
is  no  bacon  that  commands  a  higher  price  than  Danish  bacon, 
This  is  true  chiefly  because  Danish  poultry,  Danish  eggs,  and 
Danish  bacon  are  skillfully  packed,  uniformly  graded  and 
shipped  regularly  under  the  guarantee  of  the  shipper.  It  is 
known  the  world  over  that  this  cooperation  has  been  the  salva- 
tion of  Danish  agriculture,  that  the  farmer  of  Denmark  is  to-day 
the  most  important  man  in  his  country  and  is  important  chiefly 
because  he  has  known  how  to  organize.  It  is  said  that  the 
number  of  cooperative  organizations  in  Denmark  is  four  times 
the  number  of  farmers ;  that  is  to  say,  on  the  average,  each  far- 
mer in  Denmark  belongs  to  four  cooperative  organizations, 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  125 

In  Ireland  and  England  cooperative  buying  and  selling  have 
not  yet  reached  the  perfection  they  have  in  Denmark.  Never- 
theless, the  Irish  farmer  has  for  some  years  been  selling  his 
bacon,  eggs  and  poultry  on  the  markets  of  the  world  very  suc- 
cessfully because  he  has  been  shipping  them  through  his  local 
cooperative  societies. 

The  United  States  has  lagged  somewhat  behind  in  the  matter 
of  cooperative  endeavor  among  farmers;  nevertheless,  there  are 
some  examples  of  very  successful  cooperation  even  in  our  own 
country.  Perhaps  nowhere  in  the  world  is  there  a  stronger  sell- 
ing organization  than  the  California  Fruit  Growers'  Exchange. 
The  Exchange  has  passed  through  various  vicissitudes  and  has 
met  successfully  the  most  serious  opposition  from  railroads,  com- 
mission men  and  other  opposing  interests.  It  is  now  so  strongly 
entrenched  in  handling  the  citrus  fruit  of  the  Far  West  that  it 
is  a  mere  truism  to  say  that  without  it  citrus  fruit  growing  on 
the  Pacific  Coast  would  be  an  utter  failure. 

The  Hood  Kiver  and  other  northwestern  apple-shipping  asso- 
ciations have  been  almost  as  successful  in  marketing  apples  as 
the  citrus  fruit  men  have  in  handling  their  California  oranges. 
The  Hood  River  apple  growers  have  a  world-wide  reputation  for 
neat  and  uniform  packages  of  thoroughly  dependable  apples 
which  are  absolutely  guaranteed  to  the  consumer.  These  apples 
are  packed  by  authorized  inspectors  and  shipped  by  experts. 
They  are  sold  on  the  markets  of  the  world  by  agents  of  the  fruit 
growers'  association  and  all  the  returns  for  the  apples  go  to  the 
grower  after  deducting  the  charges  of  transportation  and  the 
services  of  agents  employed*  by  the  association  itself. 

Moreover,  the  truck  growers  of  the  Atlantic  Coast  and  the 
Gulf  region  have  made  use  of  associated  selling  for  some  years. 
The  example  of  the  Eastern  Shore  of  Virginia  Produce  Exchange 
is  most  worthy  of  imitation.  Beginning  a  few  years  ago  with  a 
number  of  disgruntled  farmers  who  had  been  shipping  their  per- 
ishable products  individually  to  the  markets  of  Philadelphia  and 
other  cities,  it  has  grown  to  be  one  of  the  strongest  marketing 
associations  in  the  United  States,  doing  millions  of  dollars  worth 
of  business  and  putting  upon  the  market  products  guaranteed  by 
the  Exchange  in  which  the  commission  men  and  retailers  have 
the  utmost  confidence. 


126  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

These  cooperative  associations,  in  fact,  are  becoming  more  and 
more  numerous  wherever  specialized  products,  usually  of  a  per- 
ishable nature,  must  be  put  upon  a  market  at  some  distance. 
Wherever  they  have  been  established  successfully  they  have  suc- 
ceeded in  bringing  to  the  producer  a  higher  price  for  his  product, 
a  cheaper  charge  for  transportation,  a  more  dependable  and  a 
wider  market,  and  consequently  an  increased  prosperity.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  consumer  has  been  able  to  get  a  product  of 
standard  and  dependable  grade  at  a  price  not  exceeding  very 
greatly,  if  at  all,  the  price  which  he  paid  for  a  poorly  graded 
product  unreliable  in  quality. 

Nowhere  is  it  more  true  that  "In  union  there  is  strength" 
than  in  the  shipment  of  perishable  products  to  commission  men. 
The  united  farmers  have  been  able  to  protect  themselves  in  a 
way  the  isolated  individual  farmer  could  never  hope  to  do, 
against  commission  men,  transportation  agencies,  and  other  al- 
lied interests.  The  fact  that  they  were  a'ble  to  choose  between 
twenty  or  thirty  different  markets  during  the  season  gave  them 
an  added  advantage  in  selling  their  products. 

Cooperation  among  farmers  in  New  England  has  never  been 
very  enthusiastically  received  although  it  must  be  said  that 
several  very  successful  farmers'  cooperative  societies,  both  for 
purchase  and  for  sale  of  products,  have  been  formed  in  our  east- 
ern states.  Some  of  the  alleged  reasons  for  the  lack  of  enthus- 
iasm on  the  part  of  our  New  England  farmers  are  first,  the  in- 
dividualism of  the  farmer,  his  desire  to  do  his  own  marketing 
and  to  make  his  own  bargains,  and  perhaps  his  dislike  of  inter- 
fering in  his  neighbor's  business  or  to  permit  his  neighbor  to 
interfere  in  what  he  considers  private  matters.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  old  independent  farmer  about  whom  so  much  has  been 
said  has  practically  gone  out  of  existence.  The  farmer  of  to-day 
depends  upon  his  market  quite  as  much  as  the  grocer  does.  His 
products  are  frequently  prepared  for  market,  shipped  to  mar- 
ket, handled  by  marketmen  in  precisely  the  same  way  as  are 
the  products  of  the  manufacturer.  Consequently  the  farmer 
is  interested  in  the  amount  his  neighbor  sells  and  in  the  quantity 
the  consumer  in  his  marketing  town  purchases.  He  is  interested 
in  railroads,  transportation,  banking,  and  all  means  of  exchange, 
and  the  markets  of  the  world  measurably  affect  him. 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  127 

In  the  second  place,  it  is  said  that  the  farmer  has  not  sufficient 
business  ability  to  conduct  a  cooperative  organization.  While 
this  is  true  in  a  number  of  instances,  it  should  not  be  true  of  the 
farmers  of  New  England  who  are  said  to  be  as  shrewd  bargainers 
as  any  farmers  in  the  world.  The  farmers  of  New  England  are 
intelligent  and  should  be  as  enterprising  and  as  capable  of  han- 
dling the  cooperative  associations  as  the  farmers  of  Ireland,  the 
farmers  of  Denmark  or  the  farmers  of  Texas. 

Another  legitimate  reason  for  the  failure  of  cooperative  or- 
ganizations among  farmers  has  been  the  fact  that  most  organiza- 
tions of  farmers  have  had  so  many  purposes  that  the  real  object 
of  the  association  has  become  obscured.  This  has  been  one  diffi- 
culty in  the  formation  of  business  cooperative  associations  by 
the  Grange.  Again,  too,  a  good  many  of  these  cooperative  so- 
cieties have  failed  because  the  members  of  them  have  had  no 
common  interest;  a  cooperative  organization  is  a  very  simple 
thing  but  each  should  be  composed  of  men  who  are  bound  to- 
gether by  some  common  interest.  A  large  number  of  purposes 
or  objects  is  likely  to  defeat  the  whole  end  and  aim  of  a  business 
enterprise. 

One  of  the  first  essentials  to  successful  cooperation  is  suffi- 
cient material  in  a  given  community  with  which  to  do  a  coopera- 
tive business. 

On  the  other  hand,  for  purposes  of  cooperation,  it  is  alto- 
gether best  that  the  cooperating  area  be  rather  small.  It  is 
much  easier  for  a  number  of  farmers  in  a  small  community  to 
organize  for  purposes  of  purchase  or  sale  than  it  is  for  the  far- 
mers scattered  over  a  county  or  two  counties  to  organize.  Con- 
sequently intending  cooperators  might  well  consider  the  growing 
of  one  or  two  special  crops  by  all  the  members  of  the  cooperative 
association. 

The  third  great  essential  to  cooperation  is  loyalty.  There 
is  no  use  considering  a  cooperative  society  unless  the  members 
are  loyal  to  the  association  even  to  the  point  of  suffering  some 
loss  for  the  sake  of  keeping  the  association  alive  and  prosperous. 
This  loyalty  is  one  of  the  most  noticeable  features  of  cooperative 
societies  abroad  and  of  successful  cooperative  societies  in  the 
United  States.  The  members  uphold  their  societies  against  all 
charges,  furnish  the  required  raw  material  even  when  the  coop- 


128  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

erative  society  pays  them  less  than  they  could  receive  outside, 
and  sometimes  even  when  cooperative  selling  is  not  always  as 
successful  as  individual  selling. 

The  fourth  essential  is  singleness  of  purpose.  It  is  true  that  a 
great  many  of  the  cooperative  societies  in  the  United  States  both 
buy  and  sell  but  it  is  also  true  that  most  of  these  successful  so- 
cieties are  organized  either  for  buying  or  for  selling  only.  A 
cooperative  society  should  be  organized  to  sell  apples,  or  to  buy 
feeds,  fertilizers  or  other  agricultural  requirements,  or  to  store 
cabbages  or  onions,  and  if  these  same  farmers  desire  to  cooper- 
ate with  others  for  some  other  purpose  they  should  form  a  sec- 
ond association. 

The  fifth  essential  is  incorporation.  Nearly  every  success- 
ful cooperative  society  in  the  United  States  and  many  abroad 
are  incorporated  under  state  laws.  The  incorporation  of  a  so- 
ciety is  a  simple  matter  but  very  many  fine  results  accompany 
it.  In  the  first  place,  the  management  is  a  board  of  directors 
definitely  provided  for  in  the  articles  of  incorporation.  In  the 
second  place,  an  incorporated  society  cannot  go  out  of  business 
during  the  limit  of  time  fixed  by  the  articles  of  incorporation, 
whereas,  a  society  organized  otherwise  may  stop  business  at  any 
time,  frequently  with  disastrous  results.  In  the  third  place,  the 
members  of  an  incorporated  society  are  liable  for  the  debts  of 
the  society  only  in  proportion  to  the  number  of  shares  which 
they  have  taken ;  and  finally,  the  incorporated  society  is  subject 
to  the  inspection  of  the  state  and  all  its  business  must  be  con- 
ducted on  approved  business  lines. 

The  sixth  essential  is  paid,  efficient  management.  A  great 
many  of  our  cooperative  societies  have  gone  to  the  wall  because 
the  management  was  inferior  or  because  the  management  was  in 
too  many  hands.  The  best  societies  in  the  United  States,  in  fact 
almost  the  only  societies  that  are  successful,  are  those  that  have 
a  single  manager.  Moreover,  if  this  manager  does  any  business 
at  all  and  is  at  all  capable  he  should  be  paid  and  well  paid. 
Managers  of  some  of  the  larger  cooperative  societies  are  paid 
remarkably  good  salaries.  For  example,  the  manager  of  one 
of  the  vegetable  exchanges  is  receiving  $10,000  a  year. 

The  seventh  essential  is  absolute  publicity  regarding  the  af- 
fairs of  the  society;  this  includes  a  full  and  complete  oversight 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  129 

of  the  books,  papers,  and  policies  of  the  exchange  by  its  mem- 
bers and,  in  addition,  a  careful  supervision  of  the  accounts  at 
stated  intervals. 

Another  essential  to  successful  cooperation  is  that  the  business 
be  done  as  far  as  possible  on  a  cash  basis.  Extension  of  credit 
has  been  a  rock  on  which  a  good  many  otherwise  successful  or- 
ganizations have  been  wrecked  beyond  repair.  The  temptation 
to  extend  credit  to  members  or  to  outside  interests  is  very  great, 
and  though  sometimes  a  credit  business  may  be  carried  on  very 
successfully,  in  general  it  is  decidedly  safer  to  make  all  business 
cash  business.  A  corollary  to  this  is  that  sufficient  cash  should 
be  provided  to  carry  on  the  work  of  the  exchange  effectively. 

Finally,  every  cooperative  association  should  be  organized  on 
strictly  cooperative  principles.  A  number  of  cooperative  so- 
cieties, both  in  this  country  and  abroad,  are  merely  joint  stock 
companies,  and  some  of  them  are  operating  more  or  less  suc- 
cessfully. Nevertheless,  there  are  some  principles  which  are  es- 
sential to  the  true  spirit  of  cooperative  endeavor  and  which,  in 
the  long  run,  give  better  financial  and  social  results  than  others. 

THE   FUNDAMENTAL   PRINCIPLES   OF   COOPERATION 

The  essential  difference  between  a  cooperative  society  and  a 
joint  stock  company  is  this:  A  joint  stock  company  is  a  com- 
bination of  capital  or  shares.  Capital  is  invested  in  the  busi- 
ness and  all  the  profits  are  supposed  to  accrue  from  the  use  of 
capital,  consequently  all  profits  are  returned  as  dividends  to  the 
shareholders.  It  makes  no  difference  whether  the  dividend  be  2 
per  cent,  or  20  per  cent,  or  200  per  cent.,  it  is  distributed  among 
the  men  who  hold  the  shares. 

Again,  the  men  who  hold  the  capital  stock  in  a  joint  stock 
company  are  the  men  who  do  the  voting.  They  do  not  vote 
as  men,  they  vote  as  shares ;  the  man  who  has  ten  shares  has  ten 
votes;  he  who  has  but  two  shares  has  two  votes;  the  thought 
being  that  the  more  shares  a  man  has  the  more  powerful  he 
should  be  in  determining  the  policy  of  the  company. 

Now  the  principle  of  a  cooperative  society  is  fundamentally 
different.  A  cooperative  society  recognizes  the  need  of  capital 
but  it  also  recognizes  the  fact  that  a  reputable  concern  may  ob- 
tain capital  anywhere  at  the  ruling  rate  of  interest.  The  ruling 


130  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

rate  of  interest  is  now  between  5  and  6  per  cent.  Why  should 
a  man  who  invests  only  his  money  in  any  business  receive  more 
than  the  5  or  6  per  cent,  that  is  recognized  as  legitimate  pay- 
ment for  capital,  the  rate  that  a  bank  will  charge?  So  in  a 
strictly  cooperative  society  it  is  agreed  that  capital  shall  be  paid 
merely  the  ruling  rate  of  interest,  say  6  per  cent.,  and  that  all 
further  profits  shall  be  returned  to  the  men  who  have  supplied 
the  business  of  the  cooperative  society,  on  the  basis  of  the  amount 
of  business  they  have  furnished.  That  is  to  say,  in  the  coopera- 
tive creamery,  the  profits  will  be  distributed  among  the  mem- 
bers who  have  furnished  milk  to  the  creamery,  in  proportion 
to  the  amount  of  milk  they  have  furnished.  The  man  who  has 
purchased  shares  will  draw  6  per  cent,  on  his  capital  invest- 
ment, but  the  men  who  have  been  responsible  for  the  success  of 
the  exchange  will  receive  whatever  profits  there  are  in  accord- 
ance with  the  amount  of  business  they  have  done. 

In  the  next  place,  the  cooperative  society  is  democratic ;  it  is  a 
union  not  of  shares,  but  a  union  of  individuals.  Instead  of 
allowing  each  share  to  have  a  vote,  each  man  is  given  one  vote. 
The  principle  is  this :  It  is  believed  that  each  member,  no  mat- 
ter what  his  contribution  to  the  capital  of  the  association,  has 
as  much  right  to  vote  concerning  its  policies  as  any  other  share- 
holder; just  as  a  citizen,  no  matter  how  many  children  he  has  or 
whether  he  has  any  children  at  all,  has  a  right  to  vote  for 
school  officers.  In  a  democracy  every  man  has  a  vote;  so  it  is 
in  a  cooperative  society.  One  man,  one  vote. 

Further  than  this,  the  cooperative  society  recognizes  that 
there  should  be  a  limitation  on  the  amount  of  capital  stock  any 
man  may  control.  Surely,  in  a  cooperative  society  the  capital 
should  be  contributed  by  members  approximately  according  to 
the  amount  of  business  which  each  man  expects  to  do  with  the 
society.  If  a  cooperative  society  is  established  with  200  shares, 
it  is  quite  legitimate  to  say  that  no  member  shall  hold  more 
than  one-tenth  of  the  total  number  or  twenty  shares.  This  keeps 
the  shares  well  distributed  and  makes  for  democracy. 

Another  point  of  importance  is  the  transfer  of  shares.  It  is 
ordinarily  unwise  to  have  men  investing  money  in  a  cooperative 
concern  in  which  they  are  not  interested.  A  cooperative  so- 
ciety, in  the  first  place,  should  be  formed  of  men  who  are  inter- 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  131 

ested  in  a  particular  line  of  cooperation.  Consequently,  when 
any  member  drops  out  and  wishes  to  dispose  of  his  shares,  he 
should  not  be  permitted  to  sell  them  to  any  person  he  pleases 
for,  in  that  case,  he  might  sell  them  to  some  person  opposed  to 
the  interests  of  the  cooperative  society.  Hence,  the  proviso  that 
a  member  may  not  make  a  transfer  of  his  shares  that  is  not 
first  approved  by  the  board  of  directors. 

These  are  the  fundamentals  upon  which  a  cooperative  society 
should  be  founded.  If  placed  on  this  foundation,  and  the  mem- 
bers remain  loyal,  success  is  reasonably  assured. 


SOCIAL  EFFECTS  OF  COOPERATION  IN  EUROPE  * 

CHARLES  O.    GILL 

THE  expansion  and  magnitude  of  the  cooperative  movement 
are  no  more  impressive  than  are  its  social  effects.  In  mention- 
ing these  it  is  not  intended  to  give  the  impression  that  in  every 
community  where  there  is  a  cooperative  society  all  the  good 
results  are  observable  which  are  commonly  attributed  to  co- 
operation. Doubtless  large  numbers  of  cooperators  think  chiefly 
of  the  reduced  cost  of  their  purchases,  of  the  higher  prices  they 
have  received  for  their  products,  or  of  other  material  benefits. 
But  it  is  none  the  less  true  that  in  this  economic  movement  the 
application  to  business  of  certain  ethical  principles  of  a  high 
character  has  produced  a  variety  of  other  good  results  which 
also  are  well  worth  consideration. 

The  good  results  of  cooperation  among  the  poor  farmers  in 
Europe  are  incalculably  great.  It  has  emancipated  them  from 
the  usurer.  In  many  places  small  farmers  had  never  known 
freedom  from  oppressive  creditors  until  the  founding  of  rural  co- 
operative institutions.  By  these  they  have  been  released  from 
this  bondage.  Whole  communities  of  people  have  been  emanci- 
pated. By  capitalizing  the  common  honesty  of  the  poor,  cooper- 
ation has  secured  for  the  small  farmer  at  the  lowest  rates  of 
interest,  money  to  be  used  by  him  for  productive  purposes  while 

1  Adapted  from  Report  of  Commissions,  pp.  127-143.  Federal  Council 
of  the  Churches  of  Christ  in  America.  Missionary  Education  Movement  of 
the  U.  S.  and  Canada,  X.  Y.,  1916. 


132  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  time  fixed  for  payment  is  well  suited  to  his  convenience  and 
to  the  needs  of  his  occupation.  Agricultural  cooperation  in  dis- 
tribution has  enabled  the  farmer  to  work  for  his  own  support 
instead  of  for  the  support  of  a  large  number  of  superfluous  dis- 
tributors who  constituted  an  enormous  burden  resting  upon  his 
shoulders.  Before  the  introduction  of  the  cooperative  system 
the  small  farmer  in  all  business  operations  had  been  discriminated 
against.  He  had  been  forced  to  buy  inferior  goods  at  high  prices 
and  to  sell  his  products  at  prices  unreasonably  low.  Probably 
the  farmer 's  business  was  the  only  one  where  products  were  sold 
at  wholesale  while  its  requirements  were  purchased  at  retail 
prices.  But  cooperation  has  changed  all  this.  It  has  enabled 
the  small  farmer  to  place  himself  on  a  level  with  the  large  farmer 
in  producing  articles  of  good  quality  as  well  as  in  the  matter  of 
prices  received  for  them.  It  has  enabled  the  smallest  holders 
to  obtain  at  moderate  prices  goods  of  guaranteed  quality.  Thus 
while  it  promotes  efficiency  on  the  farm,  cooperation  secures 
freedom  in  the  market  and  so  contributes  to  the  highest  life  in 
the  home. 

Agricultural  cooperative  societies  engage  in  many  benevolent 
enterprises  for  their  members.  The  Raiffeisen  banks  in  Ger- 
many, for  example,  support  infant  and  continuation  schools. 
They  furnish  the  ordinary  schools  with  maps,  musical  instru- 
ments and  other  equipment.  They  make  grants  to  village 
libraries,  organize  circles  for  reading  and  acting  and  establish 
evening  clubs  and  clubs  for  juvenile  members.  They  conduct 
village  institutes,  build  meeting  halls  and  establish  children's 
savings  banks,  telephone  services  and  arbitration  courts.  They 
appoint  local  cattle  shows  and  hold  regular  meetings  at  which 
instructive  lectures  on  cooperation  and  agriculture  and  other 
topics  are  delivered.  They  form  gymnastic  societies  and  bath- 
ing establishments,  cattle  and  poultry  breeding  societies,  singing 
societies,  local  nursing  centers,  infant  aid  associations  and  anti- 
consumption  leagues,  and  engage  in  other  good  works  of  great 
variety. 

Not  only  does  the  increased  prosperity  of  cooperators  secure 
for  them  better  education  through  the  ordinary  channels  but 
the  special  facilities  provided  by  the  society,  the  training  in 
doing  cooperative  business,  together  with  mutual  association 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  133 

under  these  favorable  conditions,  the  close  contact  and  associa- 
tion with  the  larger  world  which  cooperation  always  assures,  all 
result  in  intellectual  development  and  help  to  increase  the  in- 
telligence and  add  to  the  fund  of  general  information  of  the  co- 
operators. 

It  has  been  observed  both  in  country  and  in  city  that  coopera- 
tion has  a  most  marked  effect  on  the  promotion  of  thrift.  The 
cooperative  society  provides  the  farmer  with  the  means  of  pur- 
suing productive  enterprises  and  consequently  he  engages  in 
them.  He  gets  out  of  debt  and  as  a  rule  begins  to  save.  In  the 
urban  movement  it  is  often  the  case  that  the  hard  drinking  la- 
borer who  is  head  of  a  wretched  family  is  induced  to  trade  with 
the  cooperative  society  and  finds  in  a  few  months  that  he  has 
money  to  his  credit  drawing  interest.  It  is  likely  that  he  has 
never  had  in  his  possession  money  enough  to  supply  his  family 
with  food  for  a  week  in  advance.  But  his  accumulated  savings 
give  him  hope  and  he  is  encouraged  to  save  further.  Many  a 
man  of  this  sort,  whose  original  investment  had  been  only  a 
dollar  and  twenty-five  cents,  eventually  has  acquired  as  much 
as  five  hundred  dollars.  The  condition  of  his  family  of  course 
becomes  greatly  improved. 

When  a  man  begins  to  save,  his  money,  instead  of  going  into 
the  dram  shop,  is  invested  in  the  cooperative  institution.  In  the 
country  as  well  as  in  the  city  the  wastefulness  and  the  evil  effects 
of  alcoholic  intemperance  become  recognized  and  the  influence 
of  the  cooperative  society  is  thrown  against  it.  In  Dungloe, 
Ireland,  the  cooperative  store  is  the  only  one  in  the  village 
which  does  not  sell  spirituous  liquors,  though  it  is  doing  a 
larger  business  than  any  other  drug  store.  In  another  place 
where  the  people  wished  to  form  a  cooperative  society  and  run 
a  store  for  household  goods  the  Irish  Agricultural  Organization 
Society  refused  assistance  because  the  people  who  desired  to  co- 
operate thought  it  necessary  to  sell  whiskey  in  order  to  hold 
their  business  in  competition  with  the  other  stores,  all  of  which 
engaged  in  the  liquor  traffic.  In  Austria  and  Hungary  the 
priests  are  the  more  active  in  the  promotion  of  the  cooperative 
movement  because  the  members  spend  their  evenings  in  the  co- 
operative society  rooms  instead  of  in  the  public  houses.  In  Bel- 
gium the  influence  of  the  cooperative  societies  is  strongly  used 


134  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

in  favor  of  abstinence  from  strong  drinks.  In  nearly  all  the  cafes 
and  restaurants  connected  with  the  cooperative  institutions 
spirits  are  not  sold  while  customers  are  encouraged  to  drink 
light  beer  or  non-alcoholic  beverages.  Thus  the  cooperative 
movement  has  become  one  of  the  strongest  movements  in  the  old 
world  both  in  city  and  in  country  for  the  promotion  of  tem- 
perance. 

One  of  the  most  marked  effects  of  the  movement  is  the  pro- 
motion of  business  integrity.  This  is  a  matter  of  common  ob- 
servation and  experience  and  is  well  known  throughout  the  co- 
operative world.  For  example  where  there  is  a  small  rural 
cooperative  credit  society,  a  person  ordinarily  cannot  borrow 
from  it  unless  he  has  acquired  a  reputation  for  reliability.  As 
a  consequence  a  loan  comes  as  a  certificate  of  character,  while 
a  refusal  of  one  may  well  be  a  cause  of  serious  reflection  on  the 
part  of  the  would-be  borrower.  As  a  result,  people  learn  to 
care  more  for  their  character  and  reputation  in  their  dealings 
with  one  another.  It  becomes  manifest  to  all  that  honesty  is  an 
essential  quality  for  business  efficiency. 

In  agricultural  cooperation  high  prices  are  secured  only  be- 
cause the  good  quality  of  the  produce  is  guaranteed  by  the  so- 
ciety. Any  member  who  fails  to  conform  to  the  standard  will 
be  fined  or  excluded  from  its  privileges.  The  consumer  and  the 
careful  producer  therefore  are  protected  from  loss  resulting 
from  the  misrepresentation  of  the  careless  or  dishonest  producer. 
By  making  the  producer  more  careful,  much  waste  and  injustice 
is  avoided,  while  it  is  continually  being  demonstrated  that  a 
high  standard  of  business  morality  in  the  individual  is  an  as- 
set both  for  himself  and  for  his  community. 

The  promotion  of  honesty  by  the  cooperative  movement  comes 
also  more  directly  through  the  atmosphere  it  creates.  Coopera- 
tive business  promotes  what  is  called  the  cooperative  spirit.  It 
is  a  consciousness  of  brotherhood.  Under  its  influence  one  does 
not  wish  to  injure  one's  neighbor.  Cheating  and  sharp  practice 
are  so  out  of  place  and  altogether  discordant  with  the  cooperative 
spirit  as  to  insure  their  infrequency. 

The  independence,  courage  and  self-respect,  induced  by  free- 
dom from  debt,  material  prosperity,  thrift,  and  temperance  are 
also  increased  by  reason  of  membership  in  a  firmly  knitted  self- 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  135 

help  association  of  responsibility  and  power.  In  one  community 
visited  it  was  remarked  to  the  investigator  that  you  can  tell  a 
cooperator  by  his  independent  bearing'.  In  more  than  one 
locality  attention  was  called  to  the  fact  that  on  the  part  of  the 
bankers  and  business  men  in  their  dealings  with  the  small 
farmers  and  the  poor  people,  there  has  been  a  marked  disap- 
pearance of  condescension  and  the  air  of  favor  and  patronage. 
In  parts  of  Ireland  visited  the  respectful  treatment  on  the  part  of 
others  is  keenly  appreciated  by  the  cooperators,  while  the  system 
has  caused  a  greater  fellowship  and  better  mutual  understanding 
between  the  classes.  There  is  a  social  and  industrial  leveling  up 
which  is  satisfactory  to  all  concerned. 

All  this  points  to  the  powerful  influence  of  cooperation  in  the 
promotion  of  democracy.  The  cooperative  movement  was  essen- 
tially democratic  in  origin.  Both  the  original  founders  and  the 
prime  movers  were  mainly  from  the  class  most  directly  benefited. 
That  the  democratic  principle  is  the  basis  of  success  in  agri- 
cultural cooperation  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  attempts  of 
farmers  to  combine  on  other  principles  almost  invariably  have 
failed,  while  in  cities  no  other  industrial  system  has  been  attended 
with  social  results  which  are  so  satisfactory.  True  cooperation 
which  alone  can  hope  for  enduring  prosperity  is  founded  on  the 
principle  of  pure  democracy. 

The  educational  effect  of  the  cooperative  system  is  such  as 
to  give  the  wage  earners  a  keen  interest  in  public  affairs  and  to 
cause  them  to  realize  their  own  power  and  responsibility  in  them. 
That  the  cooperators  use  this  power  intelligently  may  be  seen  in 
the  large  number  of  their  representatives  in  the  public  bodies 
and  the  creditable  manner  in  which  they  acquit  themselves.  It 
is  confidently  asserted  that  70  per  cent,  of  the  cooperators  are 
on  the  side  of  political  progress.  Cooperation  is  becoming  one 
of  the  strongest  aids  to  efficiency  in  political  democracy. 

It  is  the  hope  of  most  leaders  in  the  cooperative  movement 
that  it  will  do  much  to  make  war  less  frequent.  The  cooperative 
alliances  of  different  countries  will  undoubtedly  increase  their 
trade  with  one  another.  Already  reference  has  been  made  to 
an  international  alliance  of  cooperators.  The  members  of  a  great 
international  business  organization  will  understand  the  folly 
of  going  to  war  with  one  another.  Among  cooperators  there  is  a 


136  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

minimum  of  mutual  suspicion.  "With  them  the  recognition  of 
brotherhood  and  community  of  interest  is  a  habit  of  mind.  Add 
to  this  their  increased  intelligence,  larger  information,  broader 
outlook,  and  increased  political  efficency,  and  we  must  recognize 
that  the  bonds  which  hold  the  people  of  the  earth  together  in 
peace  will  be  strengthened  as  the  cooperative  movement  advances 
throughout  the  world. 

The  experience  of  the  cooperative  movement  indicates  that  the 
application  of  right  ethics  to  business  results  well,  not  only  to 
business  itself  but  to  the  character  of  those  engaged  in  it  and 
to  all  parts  of  the  social  fabric. 

It  was  observed  by  members  of  the  American  Commission 
that  in  nearly  all  the  European  countries  from  Italy  to  Ireland 
"the  great  body  of  cooperators,  especially  among  the  leaders, 
think  of  agricultural  cooperation  as  a  sort  of  social  reform  and 
in  some  cases  almost  as  a  religion."  The  admirable  moral  and 
social  results  are  recognized  nearly  everywhere.  Not  only  has 
it  taught  illiterate  men  to  read,  made  "  dissipated  men  sober, 
careless  men  thrifty,  and  dishonest  men  square"  but  it  has 
made  friends  out  of  neighbors  who  had  always  been  enemies, 
while  estrangements  among  men  through  religious  antipathies 
and  the  inheritance  of  ancient  feuds  have  yielded  to  its  influence 
and  have  disappeared. 

It  is  natural  that  sound  principles  of  economic  justice  and  the 
spirit  of  brotherhood  should  create  enthusiasm  in  those  who  are 
engaged  in  the  movement.  In  the  cooperative  enterprises  there- 
fore laborers  are  more  contented,  enjoy  their  work  better  and 
labor  and  live  with  more  zest.  Large  numbers  of  capable 
executives  are  engaged  in  the  movement  at  great  personal  sacri- 
fice to  themselves  of  time  and  money.  Many  men,  because  of  the 
same  spirit,  are  living  in  great  frugality  though  rendering  invalu- 
able service.  Frequently  organizers  of  cooperative  societies  in 
whole  hearted  devotion  live  on  the  lowest  possible  salaries,  suffer- 
ing hardships  and  prolonged  absence  from  congenial  homes.  The 
Agricultural  Organization  Society  in  Ireland  impressed  the  in- 
vestigator as  a  Christian  institution  quite  as  really  as  did  the 
churches  in  that  country.  The  movement  in  the  vicinity  of 
Dungloe,  Ireland,  has  an  atmosphere  like  that  of  a  Christian  mis- 
sionary enterprise  in  its  pioneer  stage  of  development.  In  two 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  137 

other  places  in  Donegal,  Ireland,  two  meetings  attended  were 
like  religious  services.  The  cooperative  movement  in  the  vi- 
cinity of  the  Temple  Crone  Society  is  regarded  by  the  people 
as  divinely  inaugurated,  inspired,  directed  and  sustained. 

It  could  scarcely  be  expected  that  a  movement  with  such  bene- 
ficial results  could  have  been  inaugurated  and  successfully 
furthered  apart  from  close  association  with  the  Christian 
churches.  In  many  of  the  cooperative  enterprises  it  was  found 
that  the  clergymen  have  played  an  important  part. 


B.    OWNEKSHIP  AND  TENANCY 
TENANT  FARMING1 

JOHN    M.    GILLETTE 

THERE  is  a  tendency  somewhat  pronounced  toward  the  opera- 
tion of  farms  by  tenants  rather  than  by  the  owners.  The  owners 
ceased  operation  to  the  extent  of  almost  ten  per  cent.,  in  the 
twenty  years  between  1880  and  1900,  and  tenantry  was  sub- 
stituted. The  results  appear  to  ensue  chiefly  from  three  causes. 
First,  the  investment  in  farm  lands  by  city  residents — generally 
in  proximity  to  their  municipality,  and  second,  from  the  retire- 
ment of  well-to-do  farmers  into  the  neighboring  city  or  village. 
Third,  a  larger  period  is  required  to  save  money  with  which  to 
buy  a  farm  than  was  previously  the  case.  As  a  consequence,  each 
successive  generation  of  farmers  must  remain  longer  in  the 
tenant  class. 

The  tendencies  in  the  United  States  are  not  decisively  toward 
extended  consolidation  and  enlarged  holdings.  In  the  regions 
where  the  enlargement  is  most  noteworthy,  it  is  apparently  due 
to  the  operation  of  causes  other  than  the  advantage  in  production 
which  arises  from  large  holdings.  Quick  and  large  rises  in  land 
values,  as  in  Iowa  and  Illinois,  have  induced  multitudes  of 

i  Adapted  from  "Constructive  Rural  Sociology,"  pp.  130-137,  by  permis- 
sion, copyright  1913,  1916,  by  Sturgis  &  Walton  Company,  N.  Y.  Copy- 
right now  held  by  The  Macmillaii  Company. 


138  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

owners  to  sell  out  and  go  to  newer  regions  in  the  United  States 
and  Canada  where  several  times  the  amount  they  owned  can  be 
purchased  for  what  they  received.  In  the  Southeastern  States 
it  is  the  outcome  of  the  dependency  of  agriculture  on  an  ignorant, 
colored,  labor  population. 

Further,  it  is  likely  that  when  the  possibility  of  procuring 
cheap  land  in  the  United  States  and  Canada  has  passed  farmers 
in  the  improved  agricultural  regions  will  cease  to  sell  to  neigh- 
boring farmers.  When  this  point  is  reached,  and  when,  also, 
estates  begin  to  be  divided  among  the  descendants  of  present 
farmers,  we  may  expect  to  see  the  cessation  of  the  consolidation 
tendency  and  the  development  of  small  and  intensive  farming. 

Farms  are  almost  always  leased  in  Great  Britain.  In  France 
77.6  per  cent.,  and  in  Germany  83.6  per  cent,  of  the  farmers  own 
all  or  a  part  of  their  farms,  while  in  the  United  States  35.3  per 
cent,  are  tenants. 

There  are  two  opposing  views  as  to  the  effects  of  tenant  farm- 
ing and  small  proprietorship. 

1.  Young  and  Mill  held  that  small  proprietors  form  the  basis 
of  individual  prosperity,  independence,  and  well  being.  Young, 
who  traveled  through  Europe  in  1787-8,  and  who  believed  in 
large  agriculture,  testified  that  while  there  was  much  poor  farm- 
ing on  small  properties,  "yet  the  industry  of  the  possessors  was 
so  conspicuous  and  meritorious  that  no  commendation  would  be 
too  great  for  it.  It  was  sufficient  to  prove  that  property  in  land 
is,  of  all  others,  the  most  active  instigator  to  severe  and  incessant 
labor. ' '  He  thinks  the  way  to  get  mountains  farmed  to  the  very 
top  is  to  let  them  out  as  property  to  small  owners. 

Mill  reviewed  the  facts  and  literature  of  the  continental  method 
of  small  holdings  as  opposed  to  the  English  practice  of  large 
estates  in  his  attempt  to  get  England  to  see  the  mistake  and  loss 
incident  to  its  practice.  He  believed  the  evidence  proved  that 
peasant  properties  conduced  to  the  moral  and  social  welfare  of 
the  laboring  class  by  increasing  their  industry  to  what  a  Swiss 
statistical  writer  described  as  "almost  superhuman  industry"; 
that  territorial  arrangement  is  "an  instrument  of  popular  edu- 
cation." "The  mental  faculties  will  be  most  developed  where 
they  are  most  exercised;  and  what  gives  more  exercise  to  them 
than  the  having  multitudes  of  interests,  none  of  which  can  be 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  139 

neglected,  and  which  can  be  provided  for  only  by  varied  efforts 
of  will  and  intelligence  ? ' ' 

Small  proprietorship  is  ''propitious  to  the  moral  virtues  of 
prudence,  temperance,  and  self-control. ' '  Laborers  are  liable  to 
spend  their  entire  wage.  '  *  The  tendency  of  peasant  proprietors, 
and  of  those  who  hope  to  become  proprietors,  is  to  the  contrary 
extreme ;  to  take  even  too  much  'thought  for  the  morrow'  " ;  to  be 
penurious.  Even  among  the  pleasure-loving  French  people  of 
the  agricultural  sort  ' '  the  spirit  of  thrift  is  diffused  through  the 
rural  population  in  a  manner  most  gratifying  as  a  whole,  and 
which  in  individual  instances  errs  rather  on  the  side  of  excess 
than  defect." 

Mr.  Mill  further  holds  that  small  holdings  would  not  interfere 
with  the  desirable  and  much  needed  purpose  on  the  part  of  the 
workers  to  exercise  prudence  and  restraint  in  the  increase  of 
population.  Some  writers  had  held  that  peasant  proprietors 
would  be  likely  to  multiply  up  to  the  limits  of  food  production 
and  thus  force  a  minute  subdivision  of  land.  Mr.  Mill  believes 
that  without  education  and  habituation  into  the  exercise  of  pru- 
dence the  land  proprietors,  like  other  workers,  would  increase 
in  number  up  to  the  food  limits.  But  that  if  indoctrinated — like 
their  urban  brothers — they  would  exercise  due  restraint. 
Furthermore,  he  marshals  facts  from  Switzerland,  Norway, 
Prussia,  and  other  continental  countries  to  demonstrate  that 
peasant  proprietorship  not  only  did  not  evoke  over-population 
but  rather  checked  it. 

Concluding  his  chapters  on  peasant  proprietors  he  says : 

"As  a  result  of  this  inquiry  into  the  direct  operation  and  in- 
direct influences  of  peasant  properties,  I  conceive  it  to  be 
established  that  there  is  no  necessary  connection  between  this 
form  of  landed  property  and  an  imperfect  state  of  the  arts  of 
production ;  that  it  is  favorable  in  quite  as  many  respects  as  it  is 
unfavorable,  to  the  most  effective  use  of  the  powers  of  the  soil; 
that  no  other  existing  state  of  agricultural  economy  has  so  bene- 
ficial an  effect  on  the  industry,  the  intelligence,  the  frugality,  and 
prudence  of  the  population,  nor  tends  on  the  whole  so  much  to 
discourage  an  improvident  increase  of  their  numbers;  and  that 
no  existing  state,  therefore,  is  on  the  whole  so  favorable,  both  to 
their  rural  and  their  physical  welfare.  Compared  with  the 


140  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

English  system  of  cultivation  by  hired  labor,  it  must  be  regarded 
as  eminently  beneficial  to  the  laboring  class.  French  history 
strikingly  confirms  these  conclusions.  Three  times  during  the 
course  of  ages  the  peasantry  have  been  purchasers  of  land ;  and 
these  times  immediately  preceded  the  three  principal  eras  of 
French  agricultural  prosperity." 

2.  The  other  view  is  that  effective  farming  in  the  future  can 
only  be  done  by  a  system  of  large  properties  and  tenant  renters 
whose  rights  are  protected  by  legal  provision.  It  is  held  that 
the  capital  which  needs  to  be  invested  in  machinery  and  equip- 
ment in  order  to  make  farming  competitively  profitable  and  pos- 
sible cannot  be  provided  by  small  owners.  They  will  be  forced 
to  sell  to  capitalistic  owners  who  can  make  the  large  investments 
needed.  Moreover,  the  fall  in  prices  places  a  shock  on  the  land- 
lords and  farmers  which  is  not  felt  by  other  callings  in  the  same 
manner.  Small  proprietors  have  nothing  to  shield  them  from 
the  shock  and  must  give  way  to  men  of  larger  resources. 

It  would  seem  that  recent  events  and  the  spirit  of  present  times 
is  in  favor  of  the  position  held  by  Mill.  The  progress  that  is 
being  made  in  agricultural  development  in  Europe  and  Great 
Britain  is  most  conspicuous  just  where  the  larger  estates  are 
being  broken  up,  parceled  out,  and  vested  in  numerous  small 
proprietors.  This  is  notably  the  case  in  Ireland  and  in  Den- 
mark and  in  both  countries  farming  and  dairying  have  made 
prodigious  progress,  and  in  both  the  consequences  have  been  of 
the  best  for  the  character  and  intelligence  of  the  citizenship. 
New  interest  in  life,  renewed  industry,  progressive  and  coopera- 
tive undertakings,  enriched  social  and  moral  life,  have  been  the 
results. 

Of  much  importance  to  rural  sociology  is  the  effect  on  rural 
social  life  of  absentee  landlordism  and  of  tenant  farming.  The 
economic  effects  of  absentee  landlordism  with  its  attendant 
abuses  has  had  historic  examples.  Perhaps  the  most  notable 
recent  one  has  been  that  of  Ireland.  The  profits  of  the  large 
estates  were  spent  abroad,  draining  Ireland  of  its  productive 
capital;  the  best  land  of  large  estates  was  turned  into  pasture 
land ;  and  when  tenants  made  improvements  on  farms  to  enlarge 
the  production  the  rents  were  systematically  raised  to  absorb 
the  reward  of  initiative  and  industry.  Consequently  a  premium 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  141 

was  placed  on  neglect,  shiftlessness,  drunkenness,  and  social 
squalor,  and  agricultural  Ireland  was  emigrant  as  to  its  best  and 
most  vigorous  element,  decadent  economically  and  socially,  and 
rapidly  increasing  in  pauperism  and  insanity.  The  various 
Land  Purchase  Acts  passed  by  Parliament  revolutionized  Irish 
society,  for  it  was  mostly  agricultural  and  rural.  Small  estates 
could  be  purchased  on  one  hundred  year  payments.  Buildings 
and  sanitation  were  fostered.  Agriculture  and  education  were 
promoted.  Cooperative  undertakings  took  root.  As  a  con- 
sequence the  inhabitants  are  becoming  thrifty,  industrious,  in- 
terested in  their  own  community  affairs,  temperate,  and  a 
larger  life  is  full  of  promise. 

In  America  social  degeneration  due  to  tenancy  has  been  noted. 
Absentee  landlordism  visits  on  the  given  region  heavy  economic 
injuries.  The  tenant  who  keeps  up  the  buildings,  grounds, 
fences,  and  fertility  of  a  farm  as  he  would  were  he  owner  is  rare 
indeed.  No  doubt  juster  laws  and  more  progress  in  scientific 
agriculture  would  form  a  basis  for  the  correction  of  some  of 
these  matters.  Now  the  tenant  sees  no  profit  in  the  upkeep  of  the 
farm.  He  believes  he  obtains  the  greatest  advantage  in  getting 
the  largest  returns  with  the  least  effort.  Could  just  returns  for 
his  efforts  be  secured  the  results  would  be  better. 

But  the  economic  phase  is  less  important  than  the  social.  The 
community  interests  are  at  stake,  and  are  put  in  jeopardy 
wherever  a  neighborhood  is  given  up  to  renters  dominantly. 
This  fact  has  been  observed  frequently.  Strong  spoke  of  it  in 
his  "New  Era"  many  years  ago.  It  has  received  passing  atten- 
tion now  and  then  since  that  time.  Near  Syracuse,  New  York, 
(1894),  life  in  certain  tenant  communities  seemed  pathetic. 
Church,  school,  and  home  indicated  systematic  neglect.  In 
north  central  Kansas  (1895)  renters  exercised  neither  interest 
nor  influence  in  community  matters.  Observations  in  Mont- 
gomery County,  Illinois,  (1901-1903),  resulted  in  the  belief  that 
schools  and  churches  were  declining  under  tenant  conditions. 
Resident  owners  recognized  and  deplored  the  fact.  Observers  in 
North  Dakota  report  similar  conditions  wherever  renting  pre- 
dominates. 

As  an  accompaniment  of  the  neglect  of  church  and  school  the 
moral  and  cultural  tone  of  the  neighborhood  sink  low.  Coopera- 


142  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tive  ethical  activities  of  country  districts  usually  reside  with,  the 
church.  The  larger  cultural  and  social  outlook  associate  them- 
selves with  church  and  school  and  are  products  of  their  life. 
Immorality,  vulgarity,  low  ethical  ideals,  insufficiency  of  infor- 
mational and  esthetic  agencies  and  outlets  result  from  irrespon- 
sibility and  transiency. 

SOME  ADVANTAGES  OF  TENANCY1 

W.    O.    HEDRICK 

THE  public  has  become  interested  only  recently  in  the  size  of 
businesses  generally,  but  since  1890  our  census  bureau  has  col- 
lected statistics  relative  to  the  size  of  farms.  Speaking  generally, 
the  public  cares  not  at  all  whether  factories  and  stores  and  rail- 
roads are  rented  or  are  owned  by  their  operators,  but  it  has 
given  much  attention  to  the  ownership  and  rental  tenures  of  land 
since  1880. 

The  curious  fact  is  revealed  by  the  last  census  enumeration 
(1910)  that  it  is  the  very  large  farm  which  has  been  notable 
during  the  past  ten  years.  The  farms  of  from  500  to  999  acres 
have  had  second  place  in  growth  of  numbers,  have  exceeded  all 
others  in  absorbing  total  farm  area,  have  exceeded  all  others  in 
enlarging  improved  acreage  per  farm,  have  shown  the  biggest  in- 
crease in  value  of  total  farm  property  of  any  class,  were  second 
greatest  in  increased  building  valuation,  have  had  greatest  in- 
crease in  machinery  valuation  and  third  greatest  in  livestock  in- 
crease. The  relatively  small  number  of  these  farms,  however, 
robs  this  record  of  much  significance  in  characterizing  American 
farm  sizes. 

With  regard  to  landlordism  and  tenantry,  the  same  motive 
which  is  relied  upon  by  society  to  secure  effective  farm  handling, 
that  is,  "self  interest,"  is  the  very  one  which  stimulates  tenants 
to  rent  farms.  The  farm  business  requires  a  combination  of 
several  factors — notably  land,  labor,  and  equipment — for  its  best 
success.  The  extremely  high  price  of  all  these  elements  renders  it 
sometimes  necessary  that  two  enterprisers  should  combine  their 

i  Adapted  from  Publications  American  Sociological  Society,  Vol.  11: 
94-96,  Dec.,  1916. 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  143 

factors,  one  furnishing  land,  the  other  labor  and  equipment,  and 
we  have,  therefore,  the  landlord  and  tenant  relation.  Farm- 
management  studies  show  almost  invariably  that  tenant  farmers 
make  good  labor  incomes,  and  no  little  care  should  be  taken  in 
disturbing  a  system  not  adverse  to  public  policy  which  with  all 
its  faults  is  distinctly  profitable  to  the  farmer. 

Country-life  improvement  may  indeed  be  hindered  in  its 
cooperative  aspect  by  the  presence  of  the  shifting  tenant,  but  an 
even  more  fundamental  wrong  may  be  done  by  striking  at  the 
productivity  of  agriculture  itself  in  the  attempt  to  eliminate  this 
sort  of  farmer.  Commonly  it  is  assumed  that  tenancy  is  a  step- 
ping-stone to  ultimate  land  ownership.  The  young  farmer  or 
the  needy  farmer  may  come  to  own  a  farm  through  a  preliminary 
period  spent  as  a  tenant  farmer,  or  he  may  attain  full  ownership 
through  the  mortgage-indebtedness  route.  Comparing  only  the 
more  superficial  features  of  these  two  methods  of  reaching  the 
same  end  and  we  have  the  following  results.  Through  having 
the  stimulus  to  industry  which  comes  from  ownership  and 
through  directing  his  business  at  will,  the  mortgagor  is  ad- 
vantaged, but  he  is  limited  in  his  farm  operations  through  having 
invested  his  capital  in  land.  On  the  other  hand,  the  tenant  leaves 
to  the  landlord  the  burden  of  carrying  all  the  unproductive  farm 
parts,  such  as  buildings,  fences,  lanes,  wood  lot,  etc.  He  is 
further  advantaged  through  putting  all  his  capital  into  livestock 
and  equipment,  thus  being  enabled  to  operate  to  the  maximum 
of  profitableness.  He  gains  nothing,  however,  by  the  apprecia- 
tion in  value  of  land. 

The  suppression  of  tenancy  restricts  the  young  farmer  or  the 
impecunious  farmer  to  alternatives  which  may  prove  hurtful 
from  the  business  standpoint.  The  going  in  debt  for  a  full-sized 
farm,  as  we  have  seen,  is  likely  to  leave  the  farmer  short-handed 
in  the  means  for  the  operation  of  this  farm.  Another  alternative 
is  the  little  farm — one  which  he  is  able  to  pay  for  and  yet  have 
some  means  left  over — but  every  study  of  the  little  farm  has  con- 
vinced the  student  of  the  utter  unprofitableness  of  this  style  of 
farming.  Farm  machinery  is  standardized  in  size  to  the  needs  of 
the  full-sized  farm ;  a  profitable  number  of  labor  hours  for  man 
or  team  can  be  found  only  upon  the  full-sized  farm.  Insufficient 
variations  of  enterprises  and  too  high  costs  in  overhead  expenses 


144  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

are  only  a  few  of  the  many  reasons  given  for  the  unprofitableness 
of  the  small  farm. 

The  sharing  of  the  expenses  of  carrying  on  a  farm  business 
between  two  parties,  one  furnishing  the  land  factor  and  the  other 
the  labor  and  equipment,  has  afforded  a  successful  farm  business 
in  the  past  and  still  has  merits  for  the  future.  We  find  nothing 
to  justify  the  belief  that  the  landlord's  share  is  to  grow  larger  to 
the  disadvantage  of  the  tenant  through  the  income-absorbing 
power  of  land.  Landlords  will  doubtless  always  secure  the  re- 
turns which  are  possible  to  them  through  owning  advantageous 
differentials  in  land.  The  differentials  tend  to  become  accen- 
tuated with  the  increase  in  price  of  farm  products,  but  the  means 
have  not  yet  been  shown  whereby  the  landlord  may  wrest  away 
from  the  renter  any  share  to  which  this  renter  is  properly 
entitled. 

Tenancy,  it  may  be  said  in  conclusion,  has  stood  the  test  of 
experience.  We  do  not  mean  by  this  every  tenancy  system — 
absentee  landlordism,  or  rack  renting,  for  example — but  good 
systems  have  survived.  The  greatest  system  of  farming  in  the 
world  measured  by  the  test  of  endurance  is  a  tenant  system. 
English  farming,  where  all  but  4  or  5  per  cent,  are  tenants,  has 
given  us  our  leading  types  of  livestock,  our  best  farm  practices, 
such  as  marling,  drainage  and  rotations  and  the  measure  in  acres 
of  our  customary  farm.  On  the  other  hand,  among  the  farm- 
owning  peasants  of  Continental  Europe  (other  than  the  ex- 
tremely recent  notion  of  cooperation)  scarcely  a  single  fruitful 
farm  notion  has  developed.  Few  farm  animals  or  practices 
have  been  originated.  Women  customarily  do  the  farm  work 
and  the  peasant  himself  is  frequently  unable  to  speak  the 
language  of  the  country  in  which  he  lives.  The  test  of  a  system 
of  agriculture  is  the  character  of  its  professional  representatives, 
and  without  doubt  the  British  farmer,  though  a  tenant,  ranks 
high  among  farmers  everywhere.  The  constantly  enlarging 
growth  in  numbers  of  population  in  this  country  makes  ever- 
increasing  demands  upon  the  output  from  the  farms.  This  in- 
evitably leads  to  intensive  cultivation  with  all  its  expensiveness 
in  land,  equipment,  and  labor.  It  seems  almost  unthinkable 
under  these  circumstances  that  a  normal  tenancy  system  should 
not  develop  here  as  in  England. 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  145 

AGRARIAN  ARISTOCRACY  AND   POPULATION 
PRESSURE  * 

E.    C.    HAYES 

THE  agricultural  sections  of  America  have  in  general  by  no 
means  reached  that  balance  between  population  and  resources 
which  tends  ultimately  to  establish  itself.  They  are  in  a  period 
of  transition.  The  coming  changes  will  offer  opportunity  for 
great  improvements,  but  they  will  bring  with  them  one  great 
danger,  namely,  that  of  too  rigid  social  stratification. 

At  first  sight  such  stratification  seems  inevitable.  Omitting 
qualifications,  this  tendency  may  be  thus  stated :  when  land  be- 
comes worth  hundreds  of  dollars  per  acre,  as  it  already  has  in 
certain  sections,  the  landless  youth  can  seldom,  if  ever,  succeed 
in  buying  a  farm,  and  if  he  remains  in  the  country  must  be  a 
tenant  or  a  hired  laborer.  On  the  other  hand,  those  who  own 
land  will  be  in  a  position  to  buy  more.  Thus  ownership  of  land 
may  be  expected  to  concentrate  and  the  number  of  landless 
dwellers  in  the  country  to  increase.  This  tendency  will  be 
strongest  where  land  is  most  productive  and  most  valuable,  and 
therefore  hardest  for  the  landless  to  purchase,  and  at  the  same 
time  requiring  the  employment  of  a  large  number  of  hands  to 
tend  its  heavy  crops.  The  application  of  scientific  methods  to 
agriculture  which  will  be  necessary  to  make  the  best  lands  pay 
for  their  cost  requires  capital,  and  this  will  put  an  additional 
obstacle  in  the  way  of  the  landless  youth  and  add  to  the  tendency 
created  by  the  high  cost  of  land  to  develop  a  small  body  of 
wealthy  agrarian  aristocrats  with  a  large  body  of  tenants  or  paid 
farm  hands. 

There  are,  however,  three  counteracting  tendencies.  First,  the 
more  intensive  the  agriculture,  the  smaller  the  number  of  acres 
which  the  landless  youth  must  buy  in  order  to  become  inde- 
pendent and  to  support  a  family.  The  increased  price  of  good 
land  and  the  demand  for  fine  fruits,  vegetables  and  meats  may  be 
expected  to  force  a  more  intensive  cultivation,  which  makes 
fewer  acres  suffice  for  the  maintenance  of  a  household.  So  long 

i  Adapted  from  "Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Sociology,"  Appleton, 
N.  Y.,  pp.  47-50. 


146  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

as  wasteful,  extensive  modes  of  cultivation  prevail,  the  growth 
of  cities  clamoring  for  food  and  raw  materials  powerfully  tends 
to  increase  both  "the  cost  of  living"  and  the  monopoly  of  land. 
It  is  true  that  intensive  agriculture  .by  increasing  the  pro- 
ductivity of  the  land  tends  to  increase  its  price.  But  in  in- 
tensive agriculture  the  part  played  by  labor  is  greater  and  the 
proportional  part  played  by  land  is  less,  so  that  the  land  values 
do  not  increase  as  rapidly  as  does  the  product,  and  there  is  a 
gain  in  position  to  those  who  contribute  the  labor  required  for 
production. 

Whether  the  rural  population  is  made  up  of  independent 
farmers  or  of  tenants  and  hired  laborers,  increase  in  the  number 
of  those  who  dwell  in  the  country  and  maintain  a  high  standard 
of  living  there,  is  dependent  upon  the  increase  of  manufacturing 
cities,  either  of  the  same  nation  or  abroad,  to  absorb  their  prod- 
uct of  food  and  raw  materials.  Thus  the  high  rate  of  urban 
increase  is  favorable  to  intensive  agriculture,  and  to  the  increase 
of  rural  population  in  numbers  and  prosperity. 

A  second  and  more  important  qualification  of  the  tendency  to 
form  an  agrarian  aristocracy  and  proletariat  is  found  in  the 
absence  of  laws  of  primogeniture  and  the  wish  of  parents,  as 
testators,  to  divide  their  holdings  among  their  children. 

A  third  counteracting  tendency  is  in  the  fact  that  in  the  long 
run  farming  land  is  worth  more  to  the  man  who  cultivates  it 
than  to  any  one  else,  because  it  gives  him  a  steady  job,  inde- 
pendent of  the  will  of  any  employer.  The  price  of  farming  land 
contains  at  least  three  elements:  first,  a  sum  which  if  invested 
at  interest  would  yield  annually  an  amount  equal  to  the  rental 
of  the  land ;  second,  a  price  paid  for  the  expected  unearned  in- 
crement ;  third,  a  sum  paid  by  the  purchaser  for  the  opportunity 
of  independent  self-employment.  In  time  the  second  element 
will  dwindle,  for  there  will  no  longer  be  so  great  an  expectation 
of  unearned  increment;  indeed,  that  expectation  might  largely 
be  extinguished  by  taxation,  as  the  next  paragraph  will  show. 
Then,  unless  land  be  valued  as  a  basis  of  social  prestige,  or  for 
some  other  extraneous  consideration,  the  third  element  will  tend 
to  become  the  decisive  factor  in  its  ownership,  for  it  will  raise 
the  price  of  land  above  the  capitalized  value  of  its  rental,  and 
only  he  who  values  it  as  an  opportunity  for  independent  self- 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  147 

employment  can  afford  to  pay  this  third  element  in  the  price  of 
land. 

An  artificial  barrier  to  the  concentration  of  land  in  large 
holdings  would  be  the  heavy  taxing  of  unearned  increments. 
The  motive  for  land  purchases  by  the  wealthy  who  do  not  farm  is 
largely  the  hope  of  enjoying  the  unearned  increment  which  is 
resulting  from  population  increase,  improvements  in  transporta- 
tion and  general  progress.  Deeds  might  be  required  to  state  the 
true  price  paid,  and  the  proof  of  fraud  in  the  statement  might 
invalidate  the  deed.  The  purchasers  would  then  have  two  strong 
motives  for  having  the  price  correctly  recorded,  first,  in  order  to 
get  a  valid  title,  and  second,  because  whenever  in  the  future  the 
purchaser  became  a  seller  it  would  be  advantageous  to  him  to 
have  had  the  full  price  recorded,  since  it  would  be  the  only 
amount  which  he  could  receive  untaxed.  On  the  other  hand,  he 
would  not  overstate  the  price  lest  he  invalidate  the  title,  and  the 
seller  would  not  allow  it  to  be  overstated,  if  there  had  been  an 
increment  since  the  previous  transfer,  because  the  seller  is  taxed 
on  that  increment.  If  the  actual  price  at  successive  sales  were 
recorded  the  unearned  increment  could  readily  be  taxed. 

To  cheapen  land  by  taxing  the  unearned  increment,  and 
rendering  it  unattractive  to  speculators,  would  tend  to  make 
it  more  valuable  to  the  man  who  would  labor  on  it  than  to  any 
one  else,  and  so  to  distribute  it  among  independent  farmers  in 
holdings  no  larger  than  they  could  properly  cultivate. 


C.    ADULT  LABOR 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  MACHINERY  ON  THE  ECONOMIC 
AND   SOCIAL  CONDITIONS  OF  THE  AGRI- 
CULTURAL PEOPLE  * 

H.    W.    QUAINTANCE 

THE  social  conditions  resulting  from  the  use  of  machinery  are 
even  more  difficult  to  trace  than  are  the  economic.     Yet,  even 

i  Adapted  from  Cyclopedia  of  American  Agriculture,  Vol.  IV:  110-113. 
(Copyright,  1900,  by  The  Macmillan  Company.) 


148  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

here,  some  measure  of  the  truth  may  be  indicated  with  approxi- 
mate certainty.  Whatever  the  social  conditions  of  a  people  may 
be  at  any  given  time,  they  are  largely  the  product  of  wealth  and 
intelligence.  That  the  farmers  of  the  United  States  have  ad- 
vanced in  material  welfare  has  already  been  shown,  and  this  ad- 
vance has  been,  and  is,  a  prerequisite  to  intellectual  growth  and 
social  attainment.  For,  "as  long  as  every  man  is  engaged  in 
collecting  the  materials  necessary  for  his  own  subsistence,  there 
will  be  neither  leisure  nor  taste  for  the  higher  pursuits."  That 
the  use  of  machine  power  stimulates  mental  growth  and  activity, 
even  in  the  operator  himself,  is  too  clear  to  require  demonstration, 
for  the  men  who  work  most  with  machines  are  among  those 
properly  classed  as  the  most  intelligent. 

It  has  been  noted  that,  principally  as  a  result  of  the  intro- 
duction of  farm  machinery,  the  agricultural  population  of  the 
United  States  decreased  from  47.6  per  cent,  of  the  total  popula- 
tion in  1879,  to  35.7  per  cent,  in  1900.  The  urban  population 
classes  have  increased,  of  course,  by  the  same  amount. 

Among  those  who  have  continued  on  the  farms,  socialization 
has  become  a  struggle  for  place  against  greater  and  constantly 
increasing  odds ;  and  this,  too,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  not  only 
the  general  level  but  also  that  of  the  lower  classes  is  much  higher 
than  before.  If  we  look  to  the  proprietor,  or  independent  class 
of  farm  workers,  we  shall  find  a  great  difference  between  the 
farmers  of  the  period  just  before  the  introduction  of  machinery 
and  the  farmer  of  to-day.  The  life  of  the  farmer  was  charac- 
terized by  isolation.  Cooperation  was.  largely  limited  to  house- 
raisings  and  husking-bees,  -and  these  were  so  infrequent  as  to  be 
real  social  events. 

Self-sufficiency  is  no  longer  the  ideal.  The  farmer  has  be- 
come a  specialist,  devoting  himself  to  particular  branches  of 
farm  work,  as  stock-raising;  dairying;  potato-,  corn-,  or  wheat- 
culture  ;  or  to  the  raising  of  fruits,  vegetables,  cotton,  or  tobacco, 
having  in  mind  to  secure  the  other  things  for  which  he  has  need 
by  means  of  exchange.  The  farmhouse  is  no  longer  isolated. 
Good  roads,  the  free  delivery  of  mails,  the  telephone  and  the 
electric  car  lines  bring  the  farmhouse  into  the  very  suburbs  of 
the  city. 

The  home  is  supplied  with   conveniences  undreamed   of  by 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  149 

farmers  of  fifty  years  ago.  The  farmer  and  his  wife  are  no 
longer  to  be  set  aside  as  "from  the  country. "  They  are  people 
of  consequence,  and  their  voices  are  heard  in  institutes,  in  clubs, 
federation  meetings,  and  at  the  polls — the  man  everywhere  and 
the  woman  also  in  some  states.  What  they  say  is  listened  to  with 
respect  due  to  one  who  knows  whereof  he  speaks.  The  farmers 
are  coming  forward  also  as  members  of  the  state  legislature  and 
as  governors  of  states ;  and  many  of  those  who  lead  in  the  national 
affairs  are  proud  to  claim  some  farmstead  as  the  place  of  their 
early  training.  They  are  practical  politicians,  and  if  less  crafty, 
are  less  unscrupulous  than  their  associates  from  the  cities. 

But  there  is  another  phase  of  farm  life  the  social  import  of 
which  must  not  be  overlooked.  Along  with  the  increasing 
wealth,  home  comforts  and  influence  of  the  proprietor  class,  there 
has  been  an  increase  also  in  the  material  welfare  and  general 
intelligence  of  farm  laborers.  But  where  machine  power  is  used, 
the  laborers  have  not  advanced  as  rapidly  as  have  the  proprietors. 

During  the  twenty-year  period,  from  1880  to  1900,  the  farm- 
laborer  class,  in  all  the  states,  increased  35  per  cent.  The  farm- 
proprietor  class  increased  34.2  per  cent.  Taking  the  country 
as  a  whole,  these  classes  were  evidently  keeping  a  fairly  equal 
pace.  But,  turning  to  the  seven  leading  cereal-producing  states, 
—those  especially  using  complex  and  expensive  machinery, — we 
find  the  population  was  distributed  as  follows: 

1900  1880 

Proprietors     1,073,911  836,969 

Agricultural    laborers 631,740  363,233 

The  farm-proprietor  class  here  increased  28  per  cent.,  but  the 
farm-laborer  class  increased  74  per  cent,  In  1880,  the  laborer 
class  constituted  only  30.3  per  cent,  of  the  total  pupulation 
engaged  in  agriculture  in  these  seven  states;  but,  in  1900,  this 
class  constituted  37.1  per  cent,  of  the  population,  The  difference, 
6.8  per  cent.,  represents  a  loss  of  115,984  persons  from  the  farm- 
proprietor  class  and  an  addition  of  that  number  to  the  farm- 
laborer  class. 

The  reasons  for  unequal  growth  of  these  two  classes  of  the 
agricultural  population  is  not  deeply  hidden.  It  is  the  greater 
advantage  that  the  possessor  of  a  machine  has  over  another  who 


150  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

has  only  his  hands.  The  farm  laborers  of  to-day,  like  the  work- 
men in  the  factories,  are  being  more  and  more  separated  from 
the  proprietors  whom  they  serve.  These  classes  understand 
each  other  less  and  tend  more  and  more  to  become  as  lords  and 
proletariat.  The  larger  farms,  moreover,  are  passing  out  of  the 
hands  of  resident  owners  and,  like  factories,  are  being  run  by 
managers  whose  primary  duty  is  to  return  profits. 

The  more  intelligent  of  the  farm  laborers,  those  who  must 
be  depended  upon  to  operate  the  machines,  fare  very  well;  but 
the  ignorant  and  the  unskilled  are  probably  as  ill-conditioned  now 
as  before  the  introduction  of  machinery. 

The  decadence,  or  disintegration  of  the  agricultural  popula- 
tion due  to  the  use  of  machinery,  is  evident  even  in  the  pro- 
prietor class  itself.  The  group  (of  states)  showing  the  highest 
percentage  of  decrease  (from  farm  ownership  to  tenancy)  is 
composed  of  those  states  in  which  large  farms  and  costly  ma- 
chinery are  plainly  the  characteristic  feature.  It  contains,  in 
fact,  the  seven  leading  cereal-producing  states  of  the  country. 
The  rate  of  decline  from  ownership  to  tenancy  is  nearly  four 
times  as  rapid  in  the  states  where  much  machinery  is  used  as 
in  the  states  where  comparatively  little  machinery  is  used. 


THE  AGRICULTURAL  ELEMENT  IN  THE  POPULATION  * 

EUGENE   MERRITT 

IN  practically  all  countries  where  the  number  dependent  upon 
agriculture  is  known,  they  form  -a  decreasing  proportion  of  the 
total  population.  Wherever  a  comparison  of  the  male  agri- 
cultural workers  with  the  total  males  gainfully  employed  is 
available,  the  agricultural  workers  form  a  decreasing  proportion 
of  the  total.  Thus  is  released  to  engage  in  other  occupations 
a  corresponding  percentage  of  the  total  workers.  Apparently 
the  principal  reasons  for  this  decreasing  percentage  are  that  the 
agricultural  element  in  the  population  is  becoming  more  efficient 
and  that  in  the  readjustment  or  changes  in  the  methods  of  pro- 

i  Adapted  from  Publications  of  the  American  Statistical  Association, 
March,  1916,  pp.  50-65. 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  151 

ducing  and  distributing  agricultural  products,  the  agricultural 
people  now  perform  a  smaller  part  of  the  complete  operations 
than  was  the  case  formerly.  For  example,  cheese  was  manu- 
factured in  the  home;  now  it  is  a  factory  product.  There  is  a 
smaller  proportion  of  meat  slaughtered  and  cured  on  the  farm 
than  formerly.  Farmers  perform  a  smaller  part  of  the  hauling 
of  farm  produce  to  market  because  the  railroads  more  thoroughly 
cover  the  country. 

Many  persons,  in  calling  attention  to  the  decreasing  propor- 
tion of  the  population  living  in  rural  districts,  feel  that  this  is  a 
national  calamity.  Indeed  if  it  should  happen  that  an  increas- 
ing proportion  of  our  people  were  found  on  farms  it  would  be  a 
sure  sign  that  our  agricultural  people  were  losing  their  efficiency 
and  should  be  cause  for  alarm.  If  conditions  in  the  United 
States  were  similar  to  those  in  China  there  would  be  between 
70  and  75  per  cent,  of  the  population  engaged  in  agriculture 
or  dependent  on  it  for  their  subsistence,  whereas  in  the  United 
States  in  1910,  only  35  per  cent,  were  so  engaged.  In  other 
words,  the  agricultural  element  in  the  population  of  the  United 
States  is  twice  as  efficient  as  the  agricultural  element  in  the 
population  of  China,  to  say  nothing  of  the  difference  in  the 
standards  of  living  of  the  population  of  China  and  that  of  the 
United  States. 

The  evidence  of  the  fact  that  the  agricultural  element  in  the 
population  of  the  United  States  is  becoming  more  efficient  is 
abundant.  The  per  capita  crop  production  based  on  total 
population  increased  30  per  cent,  between  1856  and  1915,  while 
the  percentage  that  the  males  engaged  in  agriculture  formed  of 
those  engaged  in  all  occupations  decreased  from  50  to  35  per 
cent,  in  the  last  30  years.  In  other  words,  we  are  producing 
more  crops  per  capita  and  use  a  smaller  percentage  of  our  total 
population  for  the  purpose. 

Thus  it  is  evident  that  the  reason  for  the  decreasing  per- 
centage of  all  peoples  found  in  rural  districts  and  the  migration 
of  young  men  and  women  from  our  farms,  is  that  as  the  agri- 
cultural element  in  the  population  becomes  more  efficient,  a 
smaller  percentage  of  them  is  needed  on  farms  and  they  have 
to  seek  employment  in  the  non-agricultural  industries. 

The  higher  death  rate,  age  for  age,  in  urban  districts  depletes 


152  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  ranks  of  the  workers  so  that  the  rural  peoples  are  called  upon 
not  only  to  furnish  raw  material  to  feed  and  clothe  the  nations, 
but  to  fill  up  the  ranks  of  the  city  workers  and  to  contribute  to 
the  supply  of  labor  demanded  by  our  growing  industries. 


A  POINT  OF  VIEW  ON  THE  LABOR  PROBLEM  1 

L.    II .   BAILEY 

IT  is  a  general  complaint  in  the  United  States  that  there  is 
scarcity  of  good  labor.  I  have  found  the  same  complaint  in 
parts  of  Europe,  and  Europeans  lay  much  of  the  blame  of  it  on 
America  because  their  working  classes  migrate  so  much  to  this 
country;  and  they  seem  to  think  we  must  now  be  well  supplied 
with  labor.  Labor  scarcity  is  felt  in  the  cities  and  trades,  in 
country  districts,  in  mines,  and  on  the  sea.  It  seems  to  be  serious 
in  regions  in  which  there  is  much  unemployed  population.  It 
is  a  real  problem  in  the  Southern  States. 

While  farmers  seem  now  to  complain  most  of  the  labor  short- 
age, the  difficulty  is  not  peculiarly  rural.  Good  farmers  feel  it 
least ;  they  have  mastered  this  problem  along  with  other  problems. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  doubtful  whether  there  is  a  real  labor 
shortage  as  measured  by  previous  periods ;  but  it  is  very  difficult 
to  secure  good  labor  on  the  previous  terms  and  conditions. 

The  supposed  short  labor  supply  is  not  a  temporary  condition. 
It  is  one  of  the  results  of  the  readjustment  and  movement  of 
society.  A  few  of  the  immediate  causes  may  be  stated,  to  illus- 
trate the  nature  of  the  situation. 

1.  In  a  large  way,  the  labor  problem  is  the  result  of  the  passing 
out  of  the  people  from  slavery  and  serfdom — the  rise  of  the  work- 
ing classes  out  of  subjugation.     Peoples  tend  always  to  rise  out 
of  the  laboring-man  phase.     We  would  not  have  it  otherwise  if  we 
desire  social  democracy. 

2.  It  is  due  in  part  to  the  great  amount  and  variety  of  con- 
structive work  that  is  now  being  done  in  the  world,  with  the  con- 
sequent urgent   call  for  human  hands.     The   engineering   and 

i  Adapted  from  "The  Country  Life  Movement  in  the  United  States,"  pp. 
134-148.  Macmillan,  1911. 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  153 

building  trades  have  extended  enormously.     We  are  doing  kinds 
of  work  that  we  had  not  dreamed  of  a  half-hundred  years  ago. 

3.  In  some  places  the  labor  difficulty  is  due  to  the  working-men 
being  drawn  off  to  other  places,  through  the  perfecting  of  in- 
dustrial organization.     The  organization  of  labor  means  com- 
panionship and  social  attraction.     Labor  was  formerly  solitary; 
it  is  now  becoming  gregarious. 

4.  In  general,  men  and  women  go  where  things  are  " doing." 
Things  have  not  been  doing  on  the  farms.     There  has  been  a 
gradual  passing  out  from  backward  or  stationary  occupations 
into  the  moving  occupations.     Labor  has   felt  this  movement 
along  with  the  rest.     It  has  been*  natural  and  inevitable  that 
farms  should  have  lost  their  labor.     Cities   and   great   indus- 
trialism could  not  develop  without  them ;  and  they  have  made  the 
stronger  bid. 

5.  In  farming  regions,  the  outward  movement  of  labor  has 
been  specially  facilitated  by  lack  of  organization  there,  by  the 
introduction  of  farm  machinery,  by  the  moving  up  of  tenants 
into  the  class  of  renters  and  owners,  by  lack  of  continuous  em- 
ployment, by  relatively  low  pay,  by  absence  of  congenial  asso- 
ciation as  compared  with  the  town.     Much  of  the  hired  farm 
labor  is  the  sons  of  farmers  and  of  others,  who  "work  out"  only 
until  they  can  purchase  a  farm.     Some  of  it  is  derived  from  the 
class  of  owners  who  drift  downward  to  tenants,  to  laboring  men, 
and  sometimes  to  shifters.     We  are  now  securing  more  or  less 
foreign-born    labor    on    the    farms.     Much    of   this    is    merely 
seasonal;  and  when  it  is  not  seasonal,  the  immigrant  desires  to 
become  a  farm  owner  himself.     If  the  labor  is  seasonal,  the  man 
may  return  to  his  native  home  or  to  the  city,  and  in  either  case 
he  is  likely  to  be  lost  to  the  open  country. 

There  is  really  no  "solution"  for  the  labor  difficulty.  The 
problem  is  inherent  in  the  economic  and  social  situation.  It 
may  be  relieved  here  and  there  by  the  introduction  of  immigrants 
or  by  transportation  of  laborers  at  certain  times  from  the  city; 
but  the  only  real  relief  lies  in  the  general  working  out  of  the 
whole  economic  situation.  The  situation  will  gradually  correct 
itself;  but  the  readjustment  will  come  much  more  quickly  if  we 
inderstaud  the  conditions. 

As  new  interest  arises  in  the  open  country  and  as  additional 


154  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

values  accrue,  persons  will  remain  in  the  country  or  will  return 
to  it ;  and  the  labor  will  remain  or  return  with  the  rest.  As  the 
open  country  fills  up,  we  probably  shall  develop  a  farm  artisan 
class,  comprised  of  persons  who  will  be  skilled  workmen  in  certain 
lines  of  farming  as  other  persons  are  skilled  workmen  in  manu- 
factures and  the  trades.  These  persons  will  have  class  pride. 
We  now  have  practically  no  farm  artisans,  but  solitary  and  more 
or  less  migratory  workingmen  who  possess  no  high-class  manual 
skill.  Farm  labor  must  be  able  to  earn  as  much  as  other  labor 
of  equal  grade,  and  it  must  develop  as  much  skill  as  other  labor, 
if  it  is  to  hold  its  own.  This  means,  of  course,  that  the  farming 
scheme  may  need  to  be  reorganized. 

Specifically,  the  farm  must  provide  more  continuous  employ- 
ment if  it  is  to  hold  good  labor.  The  farmer  replies  that  he 
does  not  have  employment  for  the  whole  year;  to  which  the 
answer  is  that  the  business  should  be  so  reorganized  as  to  make 
it  a  twelve  months'  enterprise.  The  introduction  of  crafts  and 
local  manufactures  will  aid  to  some  extent,  but  it  cannot  take  care 
of  the  situation.  In  some  way  the  farm  laborer  must  be  reached 
educationally,  either  by  winter  schools,  night  schools,  or  other 
means.  Every  farm  should  itself  be  a  school  to  train  more  than 
one  laborer.  The  larger  part  of  the  farm  labor  must  be  country 
born.  With  the  reorganization  of  country  life  and  its  increased 
earning  power,  we  ought  to  see  an  increase  in  the  size  of  country 
families. 

The  real  country  workingmen  must  constitute  a  group  quite 
by  themselves.  They  cannot  be  organized  on  the  basis  on  which 
some  other  folk  are  organized.  There  can  be  no  rigid  short-hour 
system  on  a  farm.  The  farm  laborer  cannot  drop  his  reins  or 
leave  his  pitchfork  in  the  air  when  the  whistle  blows.  He  must 
remain  until  his  piece  of  work  is  completed ;  this  is  the  natural 
responsibility  of  a  farm  laborer,  and  it  is  in  meeting  this  re- 
sponsibility that  he  is  able  to  rise  to  the  upper  grade  and  to 
develop  his  usefulness  as  a  citizen. 

It  is  a  large  question  whether  we  are  to  have  a  distinct  work- 
ing-class in  the  country  as  distinguished  from  the  land-owning 
farmer.  -  The  old  order  is  one  of  perfect  democracy,  in  which 
the  laboring-man  is  a  part  of  the  farmer 's  family.  It  is  not  to  be 
expected  that  this  condition  can  continue  in  its  old  form,  but  the 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  155 

probability  is  that  there  will  always  be  a  different  relation  be- 
tween workingman  and  employer  in  the  country  from  that  which 
obtains  in  the  city.  The  relation  will  be  more  direct  and  per- 
sonal. The  employer  will  always  feel  his  sense  of  obligation  and 
responsibility  to  the  man  whom  he  employs  and  to  the  man's 
family.  Persons  do  not  starve  to  death  in  the  open  country. 

Some  persons  think  that  the  farming  of  the  future  is  still  to  be 
performed  on  the  family-plan,  by  which  all  members  of  the  family 
perform  the  labor,  and  whatever  incidental  help  is  employed 
will  become  for  the  time  a  part  of  the  family.  This  will  probably 
continue  to  be  the  rule.  But  we  must  face  the  fact,  however, 
that  a  necessary  result  of  the  organization  of  country  life  and 
the  specialization  of  its  industries,  that  is  now  so  much  urged, 
will  be  the  production  of  a  laboring  class  by  itself. 


D.    CHILD  LABOR 
RURAL  CHILD  LABOR1 

JOHN   M.    GILLETTE 

IT  has  been  the  customary  assumption  that  the  child  labor 
evil  is  confined  to  our  cities  and  manufacturing  villages.  Un- 
doubtedly the  more  vigorous  and  unwarrantable  conditions  rel- 
ative to  youthful  workers  do  entrench  themselves  in  those  places. 
Another  familiar  assumption  is  that  the  child  labor  performed  on 
the  farm  is  entirely  wholesome  and  is  therefore  to  be  encouraged. 
But  it  is  largely  the  product  of  those  who  are  ignorant  of  farm 
life,  or  of  those  who  have  seen  agriculture  at  a  distance  or  in 
certain  favored  regions. 

It  can  hardly  be  questioned  that  much  of  the  work  which  farm 
children  do  is  a  distinct  advantage  to  them.  Work  which  is 
suited  to  the  growing  boy  and  girl  is  conducive  to  a  better  de- 
velopment of  body  and  mind.  The  chores  about  the  house  and 
barn,  and  the  lighter  forms  of  labor  which  may  be  engaged  in 
outside  of  school  hours  are  distinctly  favorable  to  the  estab- 

i  Adapted  from  Child  Labor  Bulletin,  No.  I,  p.  154.  National  Child 
Labor  Committee,  New  York. 


156  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

lishment  of  a  disciplined  ability  to  carry  on  useful  activities, 
which  is  deadly  lacking  in  urban  children.  It  is  one  of  the 
recognized  defects  of  city  life  that  there  is  nothing  at  which  to 
set  the  boys  and  girls  outside  of  school  hours  and  in  vacation 
periods.  Idleness  and  idle  habits,  bad  associations,  and  irregular 
wayward  tendencies  are  often  directly  traceable  to  this  void  in 
the  city  boy  life.  It  is  not  the  adjusted,  timely  work  of  children 
in  the  country  which  is  the  question.  There  is  far  more  labor 
of  an  excessive  nature  placed  on  children,  particularly  boys,  who 
live  on  farms  than  we  would  suspect. 


COLORADO  BEET  WORKERS  * 

DR.    E.    N.    CLOPPER 

WE  have  been  undertaking  some  isolated  investigations  of  child 
labor  in  agriculture  because  it  is  a  subject  about  which  we  know 
very  little  although  the  1910  census  reports  that  almost  72  per 
cent,  of  all  the  children  between  ten  and  fifteen  years  of  age 
engaged  in  gainful  occupations  in  the  United  States  are  in  agri- 
cultural pursuits  and  that  18  per  cent,  of  them  or  260,000  are 
farm  laborers  working  for  other  than  their  own  parents. 

In  a  recent  study  of  the  employment  of  children  in  the  cultiva- 
tion of  sugar  beets  in  Colorado  we  found  an  interesting  situation. 
There  are  about  5,000  children  between  six  and  fifteen  working 
in  the  beet  fields,  practically  all  of  them  with  their  own  parents. 
These  children  of  course  are  under  the  compulsory  education  law 
of  Colorado  which  requires  them  to  attend  school  nine  months, 
but  as  the  local  system  is  organized  on  the  district  plan  the  local 
truant  officer  does  not  always  enforce  the  law  because  he  would 
be  required  to  prosecute  his  own  immediate  friends  and  neigh- 
bors. The  remedy  seems  to  lie  in  a  large  unit  of  organization 
that  would  remove  enforcement  outside  the  immediate  locality. 

We  found  that  the  best  working  children  were  kept  out  of 
school  about  three  months  in  the  fall  and  lost  about  three  and  a 
half  times  as  many  days  of  school  as  the  non-beet  workers.  This 
makes  it  impossible  for  the  teachers  to  do  the  same  work  with 

i  Adapted  from  Child  .  Labor  Bulletin.  May,  1916.  P.  38.  National 
Child  Labor  Committee,  New  York. 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  157 

them  as  the  other  children  and  hence  the  beet-workers  were 
found  to  be  very  much  retarded. 


STRAWBERRY  PICKERS  OF  MARYLAND  * 

HARRY    H.    BREMER 

TWENTY-EIGHT  farms  were  visited  in  a  brief  investigation  last 
spring.  On  none  of  these  was  provision  for  family  privacy  made. 
In  one  or  two  cases  only  one  family  was  found  occupying  a 
single  house  but  this  was  not  from  any  desire  of  the  farmer  to 
meet  the  lowest  possible  standard  of  decency,  but  simply  be- 
cause only  about  half  of  the  usual  number  of  pickers  had  been 
taken  out,  owing  to  the  poor  crops.  On  one  farm  the  farmer 
pointed  with  pride  to  his  pickers'  shanty  and  claimed  it  was  the 
best  on  all  the  farms.  He  boasted  that  in  its  construction  he  had 
paid  especial  care  to  ventilation  and  the  general  well-being  of 
the  pickers.  What  I  saw  was  a  two  story  building  I  would 
have  taken  for  a  barn,  with  four  windows  and  two  doors  on  the 
first  floor,  and  two  windows  and  one  door  on  the  second.  The 
building  contained  but  a  single  large  room  on  each  floor,  and 
showed  absolutely  no  provision  for  comfort  or  privacy.  In  this 
he  housed  his  pickers,  men,  women,  and  children,  without  regard 
to  age,  sex,  or  relationship.  And  as  a  sort  of  explanation  of 
such  meager  provision,  he  went  on  to  expatiate  on  the  low 
standard  of  morals  and  the  promiscuous  living  he  thought 
characterized  the  lives  of  the  people  when  in  the  city,  "In  the 
city,"  said  he,  "they  live  like  cattle.  Go  into  any  house  in 
Bond  Street  and  you  will  find  them  crowded  in  worse  than 
they  are  here."  The  other  farmers,  I  found,  held  the  same 
mistaken  idea.  This  is  a  base  libel  on  these  people.  Preceding 
the  investigation  of  the  farms  nearly  four  hundred  families  were 
visited  in  their  homes.  In  not  one  instance  was  more  than  one 
family  living  together  and  most  families  had  three  or  four  rooms. 
For  the  most  part  these  homes  were  clean  and  showed  care. 

i  Adapted  from  Child  Labor  Bulletin,  No.  4.  P.  71.  National  Child 
Labor  Committee,  New  York. 


158  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

CHILDREN  OR  COTTON 1 

LEWIS    H.    HINE 

No  wonder  a  school  superintendent  told  me :  "  Cotton  is  a  curse 
to  the  Texas  children."  I  was  then  just  beginning  a  detailed 
investigation  of  conditions  on  Texas  farms.  For  two  months  I 
went  from  farm  to  farm  through  forty  counties  from  the  "Pan- 
handle" to  the  Gulf,  where  I  saw  Mellie  and  Millie  and  Edith 
and  Ruby  and  other  tiny  bits  of  humanity  picking  cotton  in 
every  field. 

We  have  long  assailed  (and  justly)  the  cotton  industry  as  the 
Herod  of  the  mills.  The  sunshine  in  the  cotton  fields  has  blinded 
our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  the  cotton  picker  suffers  quite  as  much 
as  the  mill-hand  from  monotony,  overwork  and  the  hopelessness 
of  his  life.  It  is  high  time  for  us  to  face  the  truth  and  add  to  our 
indictment  of  King  Cotton,  a  new  charge — the  Herod  of  the 
fields. 

Why  ?  What  is  it  that  is  actually  happening  to  these  children  ? 
Come  out  with  me  at  "sun-up"  and  see  them  trooping  into  the 
fields  with  their  parents  and  neighbors.  At  first  the  morning 
will  be  fresh,  and  nature  full  of  beauty.  You  will  see  kiddies 
four  or  five  years  old  picking  as  though  it  were  a  game  of  imita- 
tion and  considering  it  great  fun,  and  you  will  think  (perhaps) 
that  it  is  a  wholesome  task,  a  manifestation  of  a  kind  Providence. 
But  watch  them  picking  through  all  the  length  of  a  hot  summer 
day,  and  the  mere  sight  of  their  monotonous  repetition  of  a  simple 
task  will  tire  you  out  long  before  they  stop.  Their  working  day 
follows  the  sun  and  not  until  sundown  do  they  leave  the  fields  for 
the  night.  Then  turn  to  the  "older"  children  of  six  or  seven, 
who  are  considered  steady  workers,  and  responsible  for  a  share 
of  the  output,  and  you  will  realize  that  for  them  even  in  the 
beauty  of  the  early  morning  the  fun  has  quite  lost  its  savor. 

Here  and  there  a  strong  voice  is  raised  in  protest.  Such  a 
one  was  Clarence  Ousley,  who  addressed  the  Southern  Commer- 
cial Congress.  He  said : 

*  *  We  all  are  exercised  about  the  hours  of  labor,  the  wages  and 
the  living  conditions,  of  the  women  and  children  who  work  in  the 

i  Adapted  from  the  Survey,  Vol.  31,  pp.  589-592.     1913-14. 


SOME  ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  159 

mills,  stores  and  offices,  but  we  take  little  or  no  thought  of  the 
hours  of  labor,  the  wages  and  the  living  conditions  of  the  women 
and  children  who  furnish  the  raw  material  of  the  looms.  It  is 
for  the  comfort  and  happiness  of  these  primarily,  for  the  greater 
prosperity  of  the  South  secondarily,  and  finally  for  the  social 
and  political  blessings  to  come  to  the  republic  through  a  thriving 
yeomanry,  through  the  strength  and  virtue  of  a  contented  and 
cultured  rural  population,  that  I  beg  your  patience." 

It  is  quite  possible  that  the  Texas  farmer  is  not  so  indifferent 
to  the  exploitation  of  his  children  as  he  appears  to  be,  for  he  is 
literally  "up  against  it,"  and  he  may  be  applying  the  common 
anodyne  of  accepting  and  even  justifying  that  which  appears  to 
him  to  be  inevitable.  It  is  obviously  easier  for  outside  observers 
to  tell  him  that  child  labor  is  only  making  matters  worse  and 
that  there  is  no  way  out  until  he  abolishes  it,  that  it  is  for  him  to 
appreciate  and  act  upon  such  a  long  plan. 

More  than  half  of  the  farmers  in'  Texas  are  transient  renters, 
moving  on  every  two  or  three  years  in  a  hopeless  search  for  better 
things.  They  are  weighed  down  with  debt ;  mortgages  are  high 
and  climbing  higher;  illiteracy  and  dependence  upon  the  one 
crop  keep  them  treading  a  vicious  circle.  The  cotton  picker's  bag 
hanging  about  the  neck  of  every  child,  bending  his  head  with 
its  weight  and  tripping  him  as  he  walks,  is  a  symbol  of  the  life  his 
father  leads  and  the  life  to  which  the  child  himself  will  come. 
He  may  be  just  on  the  verge  of  better  things  when  the  boll-weevil 
will  blight  his  entire  crop  and  reduce  him  again  to  hopeless  ruin. 
Years,  decades,  of  such  experiences  have  broken  many  a  spirit. 
They  have  lost  the  little  interest  they  had  in  education  and  the 
younger  generation  has  been  growing  up  in  ignorance. 

Therefore  it  is  that  I  place  first  and  foremost  in  any  program 
of  change  the  restriction  of  child  labor.  Children  must  be  left 
free  to  go  to  school.  The  school  year  must  be  lengthened  and 
attendance  required  through  the  entire  term.  This  is  obviously 
and  immediately  necessary. 


160  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


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COOPERATION 

Austin,  C.  B.  and  Wehrwein,  G.  S.  Cooperation  in  Agriculture,  Mar- 
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sity of  Texas,  Austin,  1914. 

Buck,  S.  J.  The  Granger  Movement.  Harvard  University  Press, 
Cambridge,  1913. 

Cance,  Alexander.  The  Farmer's  Cooperative  Exchange.  Mass.  Ag. 
Col.  Extension  Bui.,  1914. 

Coulter,  John  Lee.  Cooperation  Among  Farmers.  Sturgis,  N.  Y., 
1914. 

Fay,  C.  R.     Cooperation  at  Home  and  Abroad.     King,  London,  1908. 

Filley,  H.  C.  Cooperation.  Bulletin  31.  June,  1915,  Agricultural 
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Ford,  James.  Cooperation  in  New  England.  Survey  Associates,  Inc., 
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Hibbard,  B.  H.  Agricultural  Cooperation.  Bulletin  238.  Jan.,  1917. 
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Jefferson,  Lorian  P.  The  Community  Market.  Massachusetts  Agri- 
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Poe,  Clarence.  How  Farmers  Cooperate  and  Double  Profits.  Orange 
Judd,  N.  Y.,  1915. 

Powell,  G.  Harold.  Cooperation  in  Agriculture,  Macmillan,  N.  Y., 
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Sinclair,  John  F.  Cooperation  and  Marketing.  Report  Wisconsin 
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Tousley,  E.  M.  Cooperation  Among  Farmers — Ethical  Principles  In- 
volved. Minneapolis,  Minn.,  1910. 

Wolff,  Henry  M.     Cooperation  in  Agriculture.     King,  London,  1912. 

MARKETING 

Holmes,  Geo.  H.     Systems  of  Marketing  Farm  Products  and  Demand 

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1913. 

Huebner,  Grover  G.     Agricultural  Commerce.     Appleton,  N.  Y.,  1915. 
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of  the  Mayor's  Market  Commission  of  New  York  City,  Dec.,  1913. 
Weld,  L.  D.  H.     The  Marketing  of  Farm  Products.     Macmillan,  N. 

Y.,  1916. 

TENANCY 

Ely,  R.  T.  and  Galpin,  C.  J.  Tenancy  in  an  Ideal  System  of  Land 
Ownership.  Am.  Econ.  Assn.  Proc.,  pp.  180-212,  March,  1919. 

Ely,  R,  T.  Private  Colonization  of  Land.  Am.  Econ.  Rev.,  Sept. 
1918. 


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Haney,  Lewis.     Studies  in  the  Land  Problem  in  Texas.     Bui.  Univ.  of 

Texas,  No.  39, 1915. 

Hibbard,  B.  H.  Farm  Tenancy  in  the  U.  S.  Int.  Rev.  of  Agri.  Eco- 
nomics, Vol.  8,  No.  4,  pp.  90-99,  April,  1917.  Found  also  in 

Annals  40:29-39,  March,  1912. 
Kent,  Wm.     Land.  Tenure  and  Public  Policy.     Am.  Econ.  Assn.  Proc., 

pp.  213-225,  March,  1919.     Found  also  in  Yale  Review,  pp.  5(>4- 

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Mead,  Ehvood.     The  Tenant  Farmer  and  Land  Monopoly.     Conf.  of 

Social  Work,  pp.  373-382,  1918. 

Nourse,  E.  G.     Agricultural  Economics.     Chapter  XII,  Univ.  of  Chi- 
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1916. 
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105  East  22nd  Street,  New  York. 


CHAPTEE  VII 

MENTAL  AND  MORAL  ASPECTS  OF  RURAL  LIFE 
CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  FARMER1 

JAMES  BRYCE 

I  BEGIN  with  the  farmers  because  they  are,  if  not  numerically 
the  largest  class,  at  least  the  class  whose  importance  is  most 
widely  felt.  As  a  rule  they  are  the  owners  of  their  land;  and 
as  a  rule  the  farms  are  small,  running  from  forty  or  fifty  up  to 
three  hundred  acres.  In  a  few  places,  especially  in  the  West, 
great  land  owners  let  farms  to  tenants,  and  in  some  parts  of  the 
South  one  finds  large  estates  cultivated  by  small  tenants,  often 
Negroes.  But  far  more  frequently  the  owner  tills  the  land  and 
the  tiller  owns  it.  The  proportion  of  hired  laborers  to  farmers 
is  therefore  very  much  smaller  than  in  England,  partly  because 
farms  are  usually  of  a  size  permitting  the  farmer  and  his  family 
to  do  much  of  the  work  themselves,  partly  because  machinery  is 
much  more  extensively  used,  especially  in  the  level  regions  of  the 
West.  The  laborers,  or  as  they  are  called  "the  hired  men,"  do 
not,  taking  the  country  as  a  whole,  form  a  social  stratum  distinct 
from  the  farmers,  and  there  is  so  little  distinction  in  education 
or  rank  between  them  that  one  may  practically  treat  employer 
and  employed  as  belonging  to  the  same  class. 

The  farmer  is  a  keener  and  more  enterprising  man  than  in 
Europe,  with  more  of  that  commercial  character  which  one  ob- 
serves in  Americans,  far  less  anchored  to  a  particular  spot,  and 
of  course  subject  to  no  such  influences  of  territorial  magnates  as 
prevail  in  England,  Germany,  or  Italy.  He  is  so  far  a  business 
man  as  sometimes  to  speculate  in  grain  or  bacon.  Yet  he  is  not 
free  from  the  usual  defects  of  agriculturists;  he  is  obstinate, 
tenacious  of  his  habits,  not  readily  accessible  to  argument.  His 

i  Adapted  from  "The  American  Commonwealth,"  volume  II,  pp.  293-4. 
Revised  edition.  Macmillan,  N.  Y. 

162 


MENTAL  AND  MORAL  ASPECTS  163 

way  of  life  is  plain  and  simple  and  he  prides  himself  on  its 
simplicity,  holding  the  class  he  belongs  to  is  the  mainstay  of  the 
country,  and  regarding  city  folks  and  lawyers  with  a  mixture  of 
suspicion  and  jealousy,  because  he  deems  them  inferior  to  himself 
in  virtue  as  they  are  superior  in  adroitness,  and  likely  to  out- 
wit him.  Sparing  rather  than  stingy  in  his  outlays,  and  living 
mainly  on  the  produce  of  his  own  fields,  he  has  so  little  ready 
money  that  small  sums  appear  large  to  him;  and  he  fails  to  see 
why  everybody  can  not  thrive-  and  be  happy  on  $1,500  a  year; 
he  thinks  that  figure  a  sufficient  salary  for  a  county  or  district 
official,  and  regulates  his  notion  of  payment  for  all  other  officials, 
judges  included,  by  the  same  standard.  To  belong  to  a  party 
and  support  it  by  his  vote  seems  to  him  part  of  a  citizen's  duty, 
but  his  interests  in  national  politics  are  secondary  to  those  he 
feels  in  agriculturist's  questions,  particularly  in  the  great  war 
against  monopolies  and  capitalists,  which  the  power  and  in  some 
cases  the  tyranny  of  the  railroad  companies  has  provoked  in  the 
West.  Naturally  a  grumbler,  as  are  his  brethren  everywhere, 
and  often  unable  to,  follow  the  causes  which  depress  the  price  of 
his  produce,  he  is  the  more  easily  persuaded  that  his  grievances 
are  due  to  the  combinations  of  designing  speculators.  The  agri- 
cultural newspaper  to  which  he  subscribes  is  of  course  written 
up  to  his  prejudices,  and  its  adulation  of  the  farming  class  con- 
firms his  belief  that  he  who  makes  the  wealth  of  the  country  is 
tricked  out  of  his  proper  share  in  its  prosperity. 

Thus  he  now  and  then  makes  desperate  attempts  to  right  him- 
self by  legislation,  lending  too  ready  an  ear  to  politicians  who 
promise  him  redress  by  measures  possibly  unjust  and  usually  un- 
wise. In  his  impatience  with  the  regular  parties,  he  is  apt  to 
vote  for  those  who  call  themselves  a  People's  party  or  Farmer's 
party,  and  who  dangle  before  him  the  hope  of  getting  ''cheap 
money,"  of  reducing  the  expenses  of  legal  proceedings,  and  of 
compelling  the  railroads  to  carry  his  produce  at  unremunerative 
rates.  However,  after  all  is  said  and  done,  he  is  an  honest, 
kindly  sort  of  man,  hospitable,  religious,  patriotic,  the  man  whose 
hard  work  has  made  the  West  what  it  is.  It  is  chiefly  in  the 
West  that  one  must  look  for  the  well-marked  type  I  have  tried 
to  draw,  yet  not  always  in  the  newer  West ;  for,  in  regions  like 
northern  Minnesota,  Wisconsin  and  Dakota,  the  farming  popula- 


164  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tion  is  mainly  foreign, — Scandinavian  and  German, — while  the 
native  Americans  occupy  themselves  with  trading  and  railroad 
management.  However,  the  Scandinavians  and  Germans  ac- 
quire in  a  few  years  many  of  the  characteristics  of  the  native 
farmer,  and  follow  the  political  lead  given  by  the  latter.  In  the 
early  days  of  the  Republic,  the  agriculturists  were,  especially  in 
the  middle  and  newer  parts  of  the  Southern  States,  the  backbone 
of  the  Democratic  party,  sturdy  supporters  of  Jefferson,  and 
afterwards  of  Jackson.  When  the  opposition  of  North  and 
South  began  to  develop  itself  and  population  grew  up  beyond  the 
Ohio,  the  pioneers  from  New  England  who  settled  in  that  country 
gave  their  allegiance  to  the  Whig  party;  and  in  the  famous  "log- 
cabin  and  hard  cider"  campaign,  which  carried  the  election  of 
General  Harrison  as  President,  that  worthy  taken  as  a  type  of 
hardy  backwoodsman  made  the  Western  farmer  for  the  first 
time  a  noble  and  poetical  figure  to  the  popular  imagination. 
Nowadays  he  is  less  romantic,  yet  still  one  of  the  best  elements  in 
the  country.  He  stood  by  the  Union  during  the  war,  and  gave 
his  life  freely  for  it.  For  many  years  afterward  his  vote  carried 
the  Western  and  especially  the  Northwestern  states  for  the  Re- 
publican party,  which  is  still  to  him  the  party  which  saved  the 
Union  and  protects  the  Negro. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FARM  LIFE  ON  CHILDHOOD  1 

CHARLES   W.    ELLIOT 

CHILDREN  brought  up  in  the  country  get  a  deal  of  invaluable 
training  from  their  rural  surroundings.  They  roam  the  fields 
and  wade  in  the  waters,  observe  plant  and  animal  life,  use  and 
take  care  of  domestic  animals,  and  help  their  fathers  and  mothers 
in  the  work  of  the  house  and  the  farm,  and  thereby  get  invaluable 
training — first,  in  observation,  secondly,  in  attention  to  the  task 
in  hand,  and  thirdly,  'in  good  judgment  which  prevents  waste  of 
strength  and  distinguishes  between  the  essential  or  immediately 
necessary  in  productive  labor  and  the  unessential  and  deferable. 

i  Adapted  from  Report  of  the  Board  of  Education,  Connecticut,  1903,  p. 
290. 


MENTAL  AND  MORAL  ASPECTS  165 

A  roaming  child  brought  up  on  a  farm,  learns  from  nature  what 
it  is  almost  impossible  to  impart  to  a  city  child.  In  city  schools 
we  have  been  for  twenty  years  past  laboriously  trying  to  provide 
substitutes  for  this  natural  training  in  country  life.  The  recent 
natural  history  study  from  specimens  used  indoors,  the  manual 
training  given  in  carpentr}r,  forging,  filing  and  turning,  the 
garden  plots  and  roof  gardens,  the  vacation  schools,  and  the 
excursions  to  parks  and  museums,  are  all  sincere  efforts  to  replace 
for  urban  children  the  lost  training  of  eye  and  hand  which 
country  life  supplied.  It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  im- 
portance of  these  substitutes ;  but  after  all,  these  substitutes  are 
inferior  to  the  spontaneous,  unenforced  results  of  living  in  con- 
tact with  nature,  and  of  taking  part  with  mother  and  father  in 
the  productive  labors  of  a  farm,  a  market  garden,  a  hennery,  or 
a  dairy.  What  children  acquire  in  the  spontaneous,  intense,  self- 
directed  use  of  their  faculties  is  always  more  valuable  than  the 
results  of  a  less  eager  though  more  prolonged  attention  to  en- 
forced tasks. 


AN  APPRECIATION  OF  RURAL  PEOPLE  l 

T.   N.    CARVER 

NOTHING  can  give  us  a  clearer  idea  of  the  failure  of  urban 
people  to  appreciate  rural  people  than  the  names  which  are 
sometimes  applied  to  the  latter.  Saying  nothing  of  such  recent 
slang  as  "hayseed,"  "rube,"  "clod  hopper,"  etc.,  we  have  such 
ancient  words  as  heathen,  pagan,  boor  and  villain,  all  of  which 
meant  originally  the  same  as  these  modern  epithets.  Even  the 
modern  word  peasant  has  come  to  have,  in  the  ears  of  the  typical 
urbanite,  a  somewhat  opprobrious  sound.  The  reason  is  not 
difficult  to  find. 

One  characteristic  difference  between  rural  and  urban  industry 
is  that  in  the  former,  men  get  their  living  out  of  the  soil  and 
in  the  latter,  the  dominant  element  gets  its  living  out  of  other 
men.  They  who  coax  their  living  out  of  the  soil  must  become 
expert  in  the  knowledge  of  the  soil  and  the  things  pertaining  to 

i  Adapted  from  Rural  Manhood,  March,  1910,  pp.  7-10. 


166  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

it,  such  as  crops,  implements,  and  live  stock.  But  they  who  coax 
their  living  out  of  other  men  must  of  necessity  become  expert 
in  the  knowledge  of  men  and  the  things  which  please  them,  such 
as  fair  speech,  manners  and  dress.  It  is  as  much  a  part  of  their 
business  to  become  expert  in  these  things  as  it  is  of  the  farmer 
to  become  expert  in  his  work  of  subjugating  nature  and  directing 
its  forces.  The  dominant  element  in  a  city  is  always  one  which 
makes  its  living  by  talking  (or  writing  and  picture  making, 
which  amount  to  the  same  thing).  This  is  the  element  which 
makes  the  sentiment  of  the  city,  coins  its  slang  and  determines  its 
tastes. 

Since  such  element  has  so  little  in  common  with  those  whose 
work  consists  in  manipulating  things  rather  than  men,  who  are 
therefore  less  adroit  in  the  amenities  of  social  life,  and  less  expert 
in  the  complexities  of  drawing  room  etiquette,  it  finds  itself 
unable  to  appreciate  them.  That  is  the  reason  why  urban  people 
have  always  found  occasion  to  reproach  rural  people  with  their 
lack  of  urbanity. 

But  to  the  discriminating  mind  there  are  abundant  grounds  for 
an  appreciation  of  those  who  make  their  living  by  tilling  the 
soil.  In  consequence  of  the  antiquity  and  universality  of  the 
agricultural  industry  there  has  developed  a  body  of  rural  lore 
and  rural  technique  the  like  of  which  is  found  nowhere  else.  Our 
attention  is  sometimes  attracted  by  the  peculiar  wisdom  of  the 
sailor  people;  but  that  of  the  farmer  people  is  vastly  greater 
though  less  peculiar  and  therefore  considered  less  interesting. 
But  because  so  much  of  it  is  learned  outside  of  the  schools  by  the 
actual  process  of  doing  rural  work — father  and  son  working 
together  generation  after  generation — it  does  not  commonly  go 
under  the  name  of  learning.  The  marvelous  technique  of  rural 
work  is  acquired  in  such  a  commonplace  way  that  we  usually  re- 
gard it  as  a  matter  of  course  and  do  not  realize  that  it  is  a  real 
technique.  But  there  are  probably  no  tools  or  implements 
known  to  any  craft  or  profession  which  are  more  perfect  in  their 
adaptation,  with  more  fine  points  known  only  to  the  initiated, 
upon  which  excellence  in  form  and  structure  depends,  than  some 
of  the  common  implements  of  modern  husbandry.  The  common 
plow  is  an  example.  The  shaping  of  the  mold  board  in  such 
a  way  to  give  the  maximum  efficiency  with  the  minimum  of  re- 


MENTAL  AND  MORAL  ASPECTS  167 

sistance  is  a  result  of  generations  of  experience  and  adjustment. 

Another  significant  characteristic  of  the  agricultural  industry 
is  that  it  is  still,  and  shows  no  sign  of  ceasing  to  be,  an  industry 
of  small  units.  A  small  unit  in  the  agricultural  industry  means 
merely  a  small  number  of  persons  employed  on  each  unit  and 
not  a  small  acreage.  This  characteristic  of  agriculture  is  of  great 
importance  because  it  signifies  that  a  very  large  proportion  of 
those  engaged  in  it  are  self-employed  and  only  a  small  propor- 
tion, as  compared  with  other  industries,  are  employed.  This  fact 
of  self-employment  means,  among  other  things,  self  direction, 
initiative,  independence,  and  responsibility  for  the  success  of  the 
business.  This  requires  qualities  never  demanded  of  the  wage 
earning  or  salaried  employee. 

The  demand  for  these  qualities  is  still  further  heightened  by 
another  significant  characteristic  of  the  agricultural  industry, 
viz,  its  seasonal  character.  The  farmer's  work  not  only  changes 
from  season  to  season,  but  from  day  to  day,  and  even  from  hour 
to  hour.  Besides  there  are  multitudinous,  unexpected  and  un- 
foreseeable changes  made  necessary  by  the  instability  of  the 
natural  forces  with  which  he  has  to  contend,  such  as  changes  of 
the  weather,  etc.  All  this  means  that  the  farmer  must  reorganize 
the  work  of  the  farm  frequently,  sometimes  at  an  hour's  notice. 
He  never  knows  what  it  is  to  carry  on  a  single  operation  the  year 
round  as  is  often  possible  in  the  mechanical  trades.  He  must 
always  be  on  the  alert  and  ready  to  decide  what  is  to  be  done 
next.  They  to  whom  this  everlasting  deciding  what  to  do  next 
is  a  painful  process  must  leave  the  farm  and  go  where  that 
question  is  decided  for  them  by  a  boss  or  manager. 

Again  it  is  a  fact  which  educators  still  have  to  lament  that  no 
substitute  has  yet  been  found  for  the  schooling  which  the  boy 
gets  on  the  farm  as  a  matter  of  course.  Here  is  where  the  boy 
on  the  farm  has  a  priceless  advantage  over  his  city  cousin.  He 
can  watch  his  father  at  work,  and,  as  soon  as  he  is  old  enough, 
may  help.  There  is  no  schooling  equal  to  this ;  but  it  is  seldom 
open  to  the  city  boy  in  these  days. 

The  intimate  association  of  parents  and  children  in  the  work  of 
the  farm  and  the  farm  household  gives  a  common  interest  to  the 
rural  family  which  is  not  always  maintained  under  urban  con- 
ditions. The  rural  family  is  a  stable  institution  as  compared 


168  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

with  the  city  fa:nily.  This  is  shown  by  the  larger  divorce  rate 
in  the  cities,  and  the  lower  rate  of  multiplication.  This  dif- 
ference in  the  stability  of  the  rural  and  urban  families  explains 
why  it  is  that  city  populations  have  to  be  continually  replenished 
from  the  country  districts. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  greatest  social  distinction  is  that  be- 
tween those  who  live  in  town  and  those  who  live  in  the  country. 
Were  it  not  true  that  city  people  are  themselves  country  people, 
not  more  than  three  generations  removed,  there  would  be  some 
truth  in  this  statement.  The  differences  between  country  life 
and  city  life  are  so  wide  as  to  produce  inevitable  divergences  of 
great  width  in  their  ideals,  their  manners  and  their  outlook  upon 
life  were  it  not  that  nature  has  a  way  of  exterminating  city 
people  when  they  get  too  far  away  from  the  rural  point  of  view. 
If  we  may  assume  that  nature  knows  what  she  is  about  it  is  safe 
to  conclude  that  the  rural  point  of  view  is  the  correct  one.  It 
therefore  behooves  us  to  ponder  seriously  what  seems  to  be  the 
maturer  preference  before  we  affect  to  despise  the  homely  virtues 
of  rural  people. 


THE  RURAL  ENVIRONMENT  AND  GREAT  MEN  * 

WILLIAM    J.    SPILLMAN 

DR.  WOODS  has  shown  that  at  the  time  when  the  average  man 
noted  in  "Who's  Who"  was  a  boy,  about  16  per  cent,  of  our 
population  lived  in  the  cities.  He  further  showed  that  about  30 
per  cent,  of  the  individuals  in  "Who's  Who"  were  brought  up  in 
the  city.  He  accounts  for  this  excess  of  city  men  amongst  men 
of  note  by  the  fact  that  the  city  attracts  talent,  the  percentage  of 
ability  in  the  city,  therefore  being  greater  than  in  the  country. 
He  would,  therefore,  explain  the  excess  of  city  men  mainly  as 
the  result  of  heredity.  He  may  be  correct  in  this  position.  I 
am  inclined  at  present,  however,  to  believe  that  while  this  excess 
may  be  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  talent  is  attracted  to  the  city 
and  that,  therefore,  the  city  child  has  a  better  chance  of  inheri'- 
ing  talent,  part  of  it  is  due  to  that  fact  that  cities  in  general  hav;» 

i  Adapted  from  Science,  30:  405-7,  Sept,  24,  1900. 


MENTAL  AND  MORAL  ASPECTS  169 

better  school  facilities  than  the  country.  Most  of  the  men  in 
" Who's  Who"  are  those  who  had  good  educational  advantages. 
I  suspect,  therefore,  that  if  an  adequate  study  were  made  we 
should  find  that  in  this  case  environment  has  had  something  to 
do  with  the  fact  that  30  per  cent,  of  the  men  in  "Who's  Who" 
are  from  the  city.  But  for  the  sake  of  argument  let  us  accept 
Dr.  Woods 's  point  of  view.  It  would  then  follow  that  30  per 
cent,  of  our  leading  men  should  be  accredited  to  the  city  if  their 
leadership  is  due  entirely  to  heredity.  Now  for  the  facts  in  the 
case.  It  is  recognized  that  the  following  statistics  are  meager  and 
that  conclusions  can  only  be  drawn  from  them  tentatively,  but  the 
fact  that  the  figures  are  consistent  with  each  other  confirms  their 
correctness. 

The  following  table  gives  statistics  for  the  three  classes  of  men 
who  may  be,  perhaps,  placed  highest  amongst  the  list  of  our 
leading  men : 

Per  Cent. 

Class  of  Men  City         Country  and  from 

Village  Country 

Presidents    2  23  92.0 

.Governors   4  41  91.2 

Cabinet    Officers 9  47  83.9 

Totals    15  111  88.2 

The  figures  for  presidents  include  all  the  presidents  this 
country  has  had.  Of  course  in  the  early  days  a  smaller  pro- 
portion of  our  population  lived  in  the  cities.  But  this  criticism 
can  not  be  applied  to  the  list  of  governors.  Figures  from  this 
class  of  men  relate  to  the  present  governors  of  the  states.  It 
is  seen  that  91.2  per  cent,  of  this  class  of  men  are  from  the 
country  or  village.  The  figures  for  cabinet  officers  include 
members  of  cabinets  between  1869  and  1903.  The  average  of 
these  three  classes  of  men  shows  88.2  per  cent,  of  them  from  the 
country.  Now,  if  we  accept  Dr.  Woods 's  view  that  the  cities 
furnish  a  larger  proportion  of  our  leading  men  for  the  reason 
that  talent  is  attracted  to  the  city,  the  proportion  of  these  men 
coming  from  the  country  should  be  considerably  less  than  the 
proportion  of  our  population  in  the  country,  but  the  facts  show 
that  the  proportion  of  these  men  from  the  country  is  actually 


170  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

greater  than  the  proportion  of  country  population.  This  seems 
to  me  to  argue  strongly  for  farm  life  as  an  educational  force. 

I  have  received  replies  from  forty-seven  railway  presidents 
in  this  country.  Of  these  55.4  per  cent,  are  credited,  to  the 
village  and  country.  When  we  remember  that  preferment  in 
this  industry  is  greatly  influenced  by  hereditary  wealth  it  seems 
to  me  that  the  fact  that  so  large  a  percentage  of  these  men  are 
country  bred  is  somewhat  significant.  Statistics  for  members 
of  the  house  of  representatives  are  of  less  value  for  our  present 
purpose  than  most  of  the  other  statistics  given  here,  for  the 
reason  that  nativity  is  a  distinct  force  in  politics,  and  that  many 
representative  districts  are  wholly  city  while  others  are  wholly 
country  districts.  Sixty-four  per  cent,  of  the  present  members 
of  the  house  of  representatives  are  from  the  country.  Figures 
for  members  of  the  senate  are  of  more  value  in  this  respect,  since 
senators  represent  states.  Yet  the  fact  that  most  of  our  senators 
are  very  wealthy  men  would  seem  to  justify  the  inference  that 
the  city  has  more  than  its  share  of  this  class  of  men,  yet  70.6  per 
cent,  of  the  eighty-five  members  of  the  present  senate  for  whom 
data  could  be  obtained  are  from  the  country.  Taking  all  six 
of  these  classes  of  men,  the  average  per  cent,  from  the  country 
is  69.4.  It  will  t>e  noted  that  the  higher  we  go  in  the  scale  of 
leadership  in  those  classes  which  are  least  influenced  by  ex- 
traneous considerations,  the  higher  is  the  per  cent,  of  country- 
bred  men.  I  believe  these  figures  substantiate  the  claim  made  in 
my  original  article,  namely,  that  country  life  has  a  distinct 
educational  value.  But  what  is  it  in  country  life  that  gives  this 
advantage?  President  Lucius  Tuttle,  of  the  Boston  and  Maine 
Railroad,  in  answering  my  circular  letter  answers  this  question. 

He  says: 

Among  other  things,  the  farm  boy  learns  methods  of  economy  and,  in- 
cidentally, the  value  of  money.  He  is  a  part  of  the  business  machinery 
of  the  farm  and  is  brought  into  close  contact  with  all  its  affairs.  He 
learns  methods  of  trade  and  how  to  buy  and  sell,  as  well  as  possible,  with- 
out incurring  losses,  and,  later  on  when  he  leaves  the  farm  and  goes  into 
a  general  business,  the  education  he  has  acquired  during  his  farm  life  be- 
comes a  fundamental  and  valuable  part  of  his  after  business  life. 

As  a  general  rule,  the  city  boy  has  no  connection  with  his  father's  busi- 
ness and  knows  nothing  about  it.  His  father  may  be  eminently  successful 
but  the  boy  has  nothing  to  do  with  making  his  success  and  is  very  seldom 


MENTAL  AND  MORAL  ASPECTS  171 

allowed  to  be  cognizant  of  the  methods  of  business  his  father  uses.  Under 
modern  conditions,  school  life  gives  the  boy  very  little  business  knowledge 
and,  at  the  end  of  his  school  education,  when  he  enters  business,  he  is 
obliged  to  begin  at  the  bottom  of  the  ladder  without  knowledge  of  many 
things  that  the  farm  boy  has  learned  in  connection  with  his  daily  home  life. 
To  my  mind  this  is  the  fundamental  reason  why  boys  brought  up  on  the 
farm  appear  to  make  better  successes  in  their  after  business  life  than 
do  city  boys  who  have  not  had  the  advantages  of  a  similar  business  train- 
ing in  their  earlier  days. 

President  White,  of  the  Richmond,  Fredericksburg  and  Po- 
tomac Railroad  Company,  in  discussing  the  effect  of  life  on  the 
farm,  says : 

It  is  preeminently,  in  my  judgment,  an  experience  which  develops  in- 
dependence and  self-reliance  and,  therefore,  I  think,  the  spirit  of  achieve- 
nfent,  more  than  any  other  I  know  of. 

Another  railroad  president  remarks: 

I  believe  that  farm  life  lays  a  good  and  broad  foundation  for  a  healthy, 
vigorous  manhood  in  both  mind  and  body. 

Another  noted  railway  man,  who  never  spent  a  day  on  the 
farm,  says : 

I  am  inclined  to  think  boys  brought  up  on  the  farm  have  better  con- 
stitutions and  are  less  liable  to  temptations. 

President  L.  W.  Hill,  of  the  Great  Northern  Railway,  says : 

My  present  home  is  on  a  farm  and  my  principal  reason  for  making  my 
home  there,  rather  than  at  some  of  the  lakes  or  in  the  city,  is  that  I  have 
three  boys  of  my  own  I  am  trying  to  give  a  fair  start  in  life.  I  believe 
there  is  no  end  of  arguments  that  living  on  the  farm  gives  the  best  chance 
for  a  growing  boy.  While  my  making  the  farm  my  home  sometimes 
works  an  inconvenience  to  me,  I  realize  that  the  benefits  to  my  children  are 
-well  worth  the  inconvenience  to  me  of  getting  in  and  out  between  my 
office  and  the  farm. 

I  have  always  contended  that  the  value  of  farm  rearing  lies  in 
the  fact  that  on  the  farm  there  is  a  chance  to  place  responsibility 
on  the  growing  boy.  I  firmly  believe  that  it  is  possible  to  work 
out  a  system  of  education  that  will  give  our  schools  all  the  ad- 
vantages of  the  farm  life.  This  is  being  done,  to  a  certain  extent, 
in  the  cities,  and  I  believe  that  this  fact  has  something  to  do  with 
the  increasing  number  of  strong  men  who  come  from  the  city. 


172  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

But  I  must  admit  that  the  actual  data  on  this  subject  are  very 
meager. 


SUGGESTION  AND  CITY-DRIFT  * 

ERNEST   R.    GROVES 

THE  present  movement  of  population  toward  urban  centers,  so 
strongly  expressed  in  Europe  and  America  at  the  present  time, 
deserves  study  in  the  light  of  the  modern  teaching  of  psychology 
concerning  the  meaning  of  childhood  experiences  as  determining 
adult  conduct.  It  is  everywhere  admitted  that  this  urban  at- 
traction of  rural  population  is  socially  significant,  and  that  its 
causes  are  many.  It  is  even  -feared  by  many  that  it  represents  aji 
unwholesome  and  dangerous  tendency  in  modern  life,  arid  that 
it  should  be  investigated  for  the  purpose  of  discovering  a  reason- 
able check  upon  this  drift  to  the  cities. 

No  study  of  the  mental  causes  behind  this  urban  enticement 
can  fail  to  discover  the  importance  of  the  suggestions  received 
by  country  Children  during  their  preparation  for  life.  (See 
"The  Mind  of  the  Farmer"— Ed.) 

Rural  education,  of  course,  provides  many  opportunities  for 
penetrating  suggestions,  and  any  one  who  knows  the  schools  of 
the  country  will  affirm  that  their  suggestions  are  not  always 
friendly  to  rural  interests.  The  character  of  some  studies  makes 
it  difficult  for  the  teacher  not  to  emphasize  urban  conditions.  In 
the  endeavor  for  the  dramatic  and  the  ideal,  the  teacher  is  likely 
to  draw  upon  urban  life. 

It  is  fair  to  state  that  a  beginning  has  been  made  in  the  effort 
to  utilize  the  country  life  possibilities  in  teaching  material.  But 
one  usually  finds  in  the  ordinary  text  book  an  unconscious  ten- 
dency to  emphasize  the  urban  point  of  view  and  to  accept  it  as  the 
social  standard.  Many  of  the  striking  experiences  of  modern 
life  necessarily  culminate  amid  urban  conditions  even  when 
caused  largely  by  rural  influences.  The  urban  center  is  the  pas- 
sion spot,  and  affords  more  opportunity  for  the  dramatic. 

The  same  fact  is  true  of  ideals.  The  teacher  is  often  tempted 
to  use  urban  illustrations  in  her  effort  to  establish  ideals  of  con- 

1  Adapted  from  Rural  Manhood,  7:  47-52,  April,  1910, 


MENTAL  AND  MORAL  ASPECTS         173 

duct.  The  spectacular  character  of  moral  struggle  and  ethical 
effort  in  the  city  makes  urban  life  a  source  from  which  to  draw 
interesting  moral  appeal.  This  bias  in  teaching  is  magnified  not 
infrequently  by  the  attitude  of  the  teacher  toward  rural  life, 
consciously  or  unconsciously.  The  suggestion  of  the  urban 
minded  teacher  and  the  urban  inspired  school  system  are  bound 
to  provide  effective  suggestions  that  will  later  provide  a  basis  for 
rural  discontent. 

The  early  experience  on  the  farm  may  leave  a  suggestion  of 
unreasonable  toil.  Romantic  youth  can  not  rest  content  with 
a  vision  of  endless,  lengthened  hours  of  work  and  merely  a  living. 
Other  opportunities  provide  a  living  also,  with  less  toil.  Parents 
have  at  times  been  responsible  for  this  conception  of  farming, 
because  they  have  insisted  upon  having  their  sons  and  daughters 
work  unreasonably  during  vacation  and  after  school.  The 
parent,  who  looks  backward  upon  a  generation  more  given  to 
long  toil  than  this,  and  uses  his  own  earlier  experience  as  a 
standard,  may  the  more  easily  commit  this  mistake  and  teach 
his  children  to  hate  the  farm  and  rural  life. 

The  boy  on  the  farm  finds  at  times  that  his  holiday  and  vaca- 
tion are  encroached  upon  by  needed  labor.  Weather  and  harvest 
conditions  rob  him  of  the  pleasures  that  his  village  chum  enjoys. 
Some  definite  plan  for  an  outing,,  or  some  greatly  desired  day > of 
sport  has  to  be  given  up  that  the  crop  may  not  be  injured. 

Doubtless  parents  allow  these  disappointments  to  happen  with 
little  reason,  and  looking  at  the  matter  from  an  adult  point  of 
view,  do  not  regard  the  boy 's  feelings  as  of  serious  significance ; 
and  yet,  in  the  light  of  modern  psychology,  we  know  that  such 
experiences  may  build  up  a  very  significant  hostility  to  the  rural 
environment  that  appears  to  be  the  cause  of  the  agonizing  disap- 
pointments. The  cumulative  effects  of  a  few  bitter  experiences 
of  this  nature  may  be'  sufficient  to  turn  the  boy  away  from  the 
country  in  his  heart  of  hearts  for  all  time.  In  such  cases  the 
first  opportunity  to  leave  the  country  for  the  town  vpll  be  ac- 
cepted gladly,  as  a  way  of  escape  from  a  life  emotionally  in- 
tolerable. 

The  student  of  rural  life  is  tempted  to  look  too  much  to  the 
country  and  too  little  to  the  city  for  the  cause  of  rural  migration. 
It  is  not  easy  to  value  properly  the  constant  and  impressive  sug- 


174  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

gestions  of  urban  opportunity  furnished  by  the  city.  It  is  im- 
portant to  recognize  that  the  prosperity  of  the  city  requires  that 
it  exploit  itself  in  ways  that  bring  people  to  the  city  to  live,  as 
well  as  to  trade.  Better  business  is  obtained  by  methods  of  ad- 
vertising that  naturally  lead  to  more  people. 

Modern  advertising  is  in  itself  a  supreme  illustration  of 
effective  suggestion,  and  its  development  has  been  for  the  most 
part  in  the  hands  of  urban  interests.  Such  advertising  has 
forced  rural  people  to  contrast  their  manner  of  life  with  urban 
conditions  and  often  with  the  result  of  discontent.  They  are 
drawn  to  the  city  on  special  o'ccasions  by  a  luring  city  publicity 
manipulated  with  scientific  skill  by  experts,  and  often  return  to 
their  country  homes  dissatisfied  because  of  false  notions  regard- 
ing the  pleasures  of  the  city.  Of  course  this  is  more  largely  true 
of  young  people  as  they  are  more  open  to  suggestion. 

Spectacular  success  is  largely  dependent  upon  urban  con- 
ditions of  life,  and  such  success  obtains  public  attention.  Even 
in  the  country  the  successes  talked  about  are  likely  to  be  those 
made  possible  by  city  life.  These  are  given  space  in  the  maga- 
zines and  daily  papers  edited  and  published  in  cities,  and  so  they 
naturally  occupy  the  minds  of  rural  readers  of  such  periodicals. 

The  young  man  who  feels  the  attraction  of  such  enterprise, 
who  wishes  to  have  a  part  in  big  things,  even  if  an  insignificant 
part,  who  craves  knowing  big  business  at  first  hand,  receives  a 
suggestion  that  invites  him  cityward.  When  a  community  is 
itself  represented  by  some  former  resident  in  some  spectacular 
success,  it  is  certain  that  many  young  men  will  question  their 
future  on  the  farm  in  that  locality.  Thus  the  human  product 
of  a  rural  community  robs  it  of  its  personality  resources — and 
the  career  of  the  man  of  fame  may  continue  to  act  as  a  tradition 
long  after  his  death,  and  still  add  to  the  rural  migration. 

It  is  not  altogether  clear  what  effect  visitors  in  the  summer 
from  cities  have  upon  rural  people  with  reference  to  city  drift. 
Although  a  matter  of  accident,  perhaps,  dependent  upon  the 
character  of  the  city  people,  and  only  important  in  a  limited  area 
of  the  country,  summer  visitors,  nevertheless,  must  provide  sug- 
gestions that  occasionally  operate  powerfully  upon  some  young 
people  in  the  country  in  encouraging  their  going  to  the  city. 
Certain  facts  in  some  of  our  New  England  country  towns  where 


MENTAL  AND  MORAL  ASPECTS         175 

visitors  from  the  city  return  summer  after  summer,  appear  to 
indicate  that  this  condition  does  encourage  young  people  in  going 
to  the  city  to  live. 


THE  MIND  OF  THE  FARMER1 

ERNEST   R.    GROVES 

THE  difficulty  is  to  find  the  typical  farmer's  mind  that  in  the 
South,  in  the  East,  and  in  the  West  will  be  accepted  as  standard. 
In  our  science  there  is  perhaps  at  present  no  place  where  general- 
ization needs  to  move  with  greater  caution  than  in  the  statement 
of  the  farmer's  psychic  characteristics.  It  is  human  to  crave 
simplicity,  and  we  are  never  free  from  the  danger  of  forcing  con- 
crete facts  into  general  statements  that  do  violence  to  the  op- 
posing obstacles. 

The  mind  of  the  farmer  is  as  varied  as  the  members  of  the 
agricultural  class  are  significantly  different.  And  how  great 
are  these  differences!  The  wheat  farmer  of  Washington  State 
who  receives  for  his  year's  crop  $106,000  has  little  understanding 
of  the  life  outlook  of  the  New  Englander  who  cultivates  his 
small,  rocky  hillside  farm.  The  difference  is  not  that  one  does 
on  a  small  scale  what  the  other  does  in  an  immense  way.  He  who 
knows  both  men  will  hardly  question  that  the  difference  in 
quantity  leads  also  to  differences  in  quality,  and  in  no  respect 
are  the  two  men  more  certainly  distinguishable  than  in  their 
mental  characteristics. 

It  appears  useless,  therefore,  to  attempt  to  procure  for  dis- 
section a  typical  rural  mind.  In  this  country  at  present  there  is 
no  mind  that  can  be  fairly  said  to  represent  a  group  so  lacking  in 
substantial  unity  as  the  farming  class,  and  any  attempt  to  con- 
struct such  a  mind  is  bound  to  fail.  This  is  less  true  when  the 
class  is  separated  into  sections,  for  the  differences  between 
farmers  is  in  no  small  measure  geographical.  Indeed,  is  it  not 
a  happy  fact  that  the  American  farmer  is  not  merely  a  farmer? 
Although  it  complicates  a  rural  problem  such  as  ours,  it  is 
fortunate  that  the  individual  farmer  shares  the  larger  social  mind 

i  Adapted  from  Publications  of  the  American  Sociological  Society,  Vol. 
XI,  47-53. 


176  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

to  such  a  degree  as  to  diminish  the  intellectual  influences  born  of 
his  occupation. 

The  method  of  procedure  that  gives  largest  promise  of  sub- 
stantial fact  is  to  attempt  to  uncover  some  of  the  fundamental 
influences  that  operate  upon  the  psychic  life  of  the  farmers  of 
America  and  to  notice,  in  so  far  as  opportunity  permits,  what 
social  elements  modify  the  complete  working  of  these  influences. 

One  influence  that  shows  itself  in  the  thinking  of  farmers  of 
fundamental  character  is,  of  course,  the  occupation  of  farming 
itself.  In  primitive  life  we  not  only  see  the  importance  of 
agricultural  work  for  social  life  but  we  discover  also  some  of  the 
mental  elements  involved  that  make  this  form  of  industry  socially 
significant.  From  the  first  it  called  for  an  investment  of  self- 
control,  a  patience,  that  nature  might  be  coaxed  to  yield  from 
her  resources  a  reasonable  harvest.  "We  therefore  find  in  primi- 
tive agriculture  a  hazardous  undertaking  which,  nevertheless, 
lacked  any  large  amount  of  dramatic  appeal. 

It  is  by  no  means  otherwise  to-day.  The  farmer  has  to  be 
efficient  in  a  peculiar  kind  of  self-control.  He  needs  to  invest 
labor  and  foresight  in  an  enterprise  that  affords  to  the  usual 
person  little  opportunity  for  quick  returns,  a  sense  of  personal 
achievement,  or  the  satisfaction  of  the  desire  for  competitive  face- 
to-face  association  with  other  men  which  is  offered  in  the  city. 
Men  who  cultivate  on  a  very  large  scale  and  men  who  enjoy  un- 
usual social  insight  as  to  the  significance  of  their  occupation  are 
exceptions  to  the  general  run  of  farmers.  In  these  days  of  ac- 
cessible transportation  we  have  a  rapid  and  highly  successful 
selection  which  largely  eliminates  from  the  farming  class  the 
type  that  does  not  naturally  possess  the  power  to  be  satisfied  with 
the  slowly  acquired  property,  impersonal  success,  and  non-dra- 
matic activities  of  farming.  This  process  which  eliminates  the 
more  restless  and  commercially  ambitious  from  the  country  has, 
of  course,  been  at  work  for  generations.  This  has  tended,  there- 
fore, to  a  uniformity  of  mental  characteristics,  but  it  has  by  no 
means  succeeded  in  producing  a  homogeneous  rural  mind.  The 
movement  has  been  somewhat  modified  by  the  return  of  people  to 
the  country  from  the  city  and  by  the  influence  on  the  country 
mind  of  the  more  restless  and  adventurous  rural  people 
who,  for  one  reason  or  another,  have  not  migrated.  In  the  far 


MENTAL  AND  MORAL  ASPECTS  177 

West  especially  attention  has  been  given  to  the  rural  hostility  to, 
or  at  least  misunderstanding  of,  city  movements  which  attempt 
ambitious  social  advances.  It  is  safe  to  assume  that  this  attitude 
of  rural  people  is  widespread  and  is  noticeable  far  West  merely 
because  of  a  greater  frankness.  The  easterner  hides  his  attitude 
because  he  has  become  conscious  that  it  opens  him  to  criticism. 
This  attitude  of  rural  hostility  is  rooted  in  the  fundamental 
differences  between  the  thinking  of  country  and  of  city  people, 
due  largely  to  the  process  of  social  selection.  This  mental  dif- 
ference gives  constant  opportunity  for  social  friction.  If  the  in- 
dividuals who  live  most  happily  in  the  city  and  in  the  country  are 
contrasted,  there  is  reason  to  suppose  that  the  mental  opposition 
expresses  nervous  differences.  In  one  we  have  the  more  rapid, 
more  changeable,  and  more  consuming  thinker,  while  the  thought 
of  the  other  is  slower,  more  persistent,  and  less  wasteful  of 
nervous  energy. 

The  work  of  the  average  farmer  brings  him  into  limited  asso- 
ciation with  his  fellows  as  compared  with  the  city  worker.  This 
fact  also  operates  upon  him  mentally.  He  has  less  sense  of  social 
variations  and  less  realization  of  the  need  of  group  solidarity. 
This  results  in  his  having  less  social  passion  than  his  city  brother, 
except  when  he  is  caught  in  a  periodic  outburst  of  economic  dis- 
content expressed  in  radical  agitation,  and  also  in  his  having  a 
more  feeble  class-consciousness  and  a  weaker  basis  for  coopera- 
tion. This  last  limitation  is  one  from  which  the  farmer  seriously 
suffers. 

The  farmer's  lack  of  contact  with  antagonistic  groups  because 
his  work  keeps  him  away  from  the  centers  where  social  discontent 
boils  with  passion  and  because  it  prevents  his  appreciating  class 
differences  makes  him  a  conservative  element  in  our  national  life, 
but  one  alwa\rs  big  with  the  danger  of  a  blind  servitude  to  tradi- 
tions and  archaic  social  judgments.  The  thinking  of  the  farmer 
may  be  cither  substantial  from  his  sense  of  personal  sufficiency  or 
backward  from  his  lack  of  contact.  The  decision  regarding  his 
attitude  is  made  by  the  influences  that  enter  his  life,  in  addition 
to  those  born  of  his  occupation. 

At  this  point,  however,  it  would  be  serious  to  forget  that  some 
of  the  larger  farming  enterprises  are  carried  on  so  differently  that 
the  manager  and  owner  are  more  like  the  factory  operator  than 


178  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  usual  farmer.  To  them  the  problem  is  labor-saving  ma- 
chinery, efficient  management,  labor  cost,  marketing  facilities, 
and  competition.  They  are  not  especially  influenced  by  the  fact 
that  they  happen  to  handle  land  products  rather  than  manu- 
factured articles. 

Much  has  been  made  of  the  farmer's  hand-to-hand  grapple 
with  a  capricious  and  at  times  frustrating  Nature.  This  em- 
phasis is  deserved,  for  the  farmer  is  out  upon  the  frontier  of 
human  control  of  natural  forces.  Even  modern  science,  great 
as  is  its  service,  cannot  protect  him  from  the  unexpected  and  the 
disappointing.  Insects  and  weather  sport  with  his  purposes  and 
give  his  efforts  the  atmosphere  of  chance.  It  is  not  at  all  strange, 
therefore,  that  the  farmer  feels  drawn  to  fatalistic  interpretations 
of  experience  which  he  carries  over  to  lines  of  thought  other  than 
those  connected  with  his  business. 

A  second  important  influence  that  has  helped  to  make  the 
mind  of  the  farmer  has  been  isolation.  In  times  past,  without 
doubt,  this  has  been  powerful  in  its  effect  upon  the  mind  of  the 
farmer.  It  is  less  so  now  because,  as  every  one  knows,  the  farmer 
'is  protected  from  isolation  by  modern  inventions.  It  is  necessary 
to  recall,  however,  that  isolation  is  in  relation  to  one's  needs  and 
that  we  too  often  neglect  the  fact  that  the  very  relief  that  has 
removed  from  country  people  the  more  apparent  isolation  of 
physical  distance  has  often  intensified  the  craving  for  closer  and 
more  frequent  contact  with  persons  than  the  country  usually 
permits.  Whether  isolation  as  a  psychic  experience  has  de- 
creased for  many  in  the  country  is  a  matter  of  doubt.  Certainly 
most  minds  need  the  stimulus  of  human  association  for  both 
happiness  and  healthiness,  and  even  yet  the  minds  of  farmers 
disclose  the  narrowness,  suspiciousness,  and  discontent  of  place 
that  isolation  brings.  It  makes  a  difference  in  social  attitude 
whether  the  telephone,  automobile,  and  parcel  post  draw  the 
people  nearer  together  in  a  common  community  life  or  whether 
they  bring  the  people  under  the  magic  of  the  city's  quantitative 
life  and  in  this  way  cause  rural  discontent. 

The  isolation  from  the  great  business  centers  which  has  kept 
farmers  from  having  a  personally  Vide  experience  with  modern 
business  explains  in  part  the  suspicious  attitude  rural  people 
often  take  into  their  commercial  relations.  This  has  been  ex- 


MENTAL  AND  MORAL  ASPECTS  179 

pressed  in  a  way  one  can  hardly  forget  by  Tolstoy  in  his  *  *  Resur- 
rection ' '  when  his  hero,  from  moral  sympathy  with  land  reform, 
undertakes  to  give  to  his  tenants  land  under  conditions  much 
to  their  advantage  and,  much  to  his  surprise,  finds  them  hostile 
to  the  plan.  They  had  been  too  often  tricked  in  the  past  and 
felt  too  little  acquainted  with  business  methods  to  have  any  con- 
fidence in  the  new  plan  which  claimed  to  have  benevolent  motives. 
It  is  only  fair  to  admit  that  the  farmer  differs  from  others  of  his 
social  rank  only  in  degree  and  that  his  experiences  in  the  past 
appear  to  him  to  justify  his  skeptical  attitude.  He  has  at  times 
suffered  exploitation ;  what  he  does  not  realize  is  that  this  has 
been  made  possible  by  his  lack  of  knowledge  of  the  ways  of 
modern  business  and  by  his  failure  to  organize.  The  farmer  is 
beginning  to  appreciate  the  significance  of  marketing.  Un- 
fortunately, he  too  often  carries  his  suspiciousness,  which  has 
resulted  from  business  experiences,  into  many  lines  of  action  and 
thinking,  and  thus  robs  himself  of  enthusiasm  and  social  con- 
fidence. 

A  third  important  element  in  the  making  of  the  farmer's  mind 
may  be  broadly  designated  as  suggestion.  The  farmer  is  like 
other  men  in  that  his  mental  outlook  is  largely  colored  by  the 
suggestions  that  enter  his  life. 

It  is  this  fact,  perhaps,  that  explains  why  the  farmer's  mind 
does  not  express  more  clearly  vocational  character,  for  no  other 
source  of  persistent  suggestions  has  upon  most  men  the  in- 
fluence of  the  newspaper,  and  each  day,  almost  everywhere,  the 
daily  paper  comes  to  the  farmer  with  its  appealing  suggestions. 
Of  course  the  paper  represents  the  urban  point  of  view  rather 
than  the  rural,  but  in  the  deepest  sense  it  may  be  said  to  look  at 
life  from  the  human  outlook,  the  way  the  average  man  sees 
things.  The  newspaper,  therefore,  feeds  the  farmer's  mind  with 
suggestions  and  ideas  that  counteract  the  influences  that  specially 
emphasize  the  rural  environment.  It  keeps  him  in  contact  with 
thinking  and  events  that  are  world-wide,  and  unconsciously 
permeates  his  motives,  at  times  giving  him  urban  cravings  that 
keep  him  from  utilizing  to  the  full  his  social  resources  in  the 
country.  Any  attempt  to  understand  rural  life  that  minimizes 
the  common  human  fellowship  which  the  newspaper  offers  the 
farmer  is  certain  to  lead  to  unfortunate  misinterpretation. 


180  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Mentally  the  farmer  is  far  from  being  isolated  in  his  experiences, 
for  he  no  longer  is  confined  to  the  world  of  local  ideas  as  he  once 
was.  This  constant  daily  stimulation  from  the  world  of  business, 
sports,  and  public  affairs  at  times  awakens  his  appetite  for  urban 
life  and  makes  him  restless  or  encourages  his  removal  to  the  city 
or  makes  him  demand  as  much  as  possible  of  the  quantitative 
pleasures  and  recreations  of  city  life.  In  a  greater  degree,  how- 
ever, the  paper  contents  his  mental  need  for  contact  with  life  in 
a  more  universal  way  than  his  particular  community  allows. 
The  automobile  and  other  modern  inventions  also  serve  the 
farmer,  as  does  the  newspaper,  by  providing  mental  suggestions 
from  an  extended  environment. 

A  very  important  source  of  suggestion,  as  abnormal  psychology 
so  clearly  demonstrates,  at  present, .  is  the  impressions  of  child- 
hood. Rural  life  tends  on  the  whole  to  intensify  the  significant 
events  of  rural  life  because  of  the  limited  amount  of  exciting  ex- 
periences received  as  compared  with  city  life.  Parental  influence 
is  more  important  because  it  suffers  less  competition.  This  fact 
of  the  meaning  of  early  suggestions  appears,  without  doubt,  in 
various  ways  and  forbids  the  scientist's  assuming  that  rural 
thinking  is  made  uniform  by  universal  and  unvaried  suggestions. 

The  discontent  of  rural  parents  with  reference  to  their  environ- 
ment or  occupation,  due  either  to  their  natural  urban  tendencies 
or  to  their  failure  of  success,  has  some  influence  in  sending  rural 
people  to  the  city.  Accidental  or  incidental  suggestion  often  re- 
peated is  especially  penetrating  in  childhood,  and  no  one  who 
knows  rural  people  can  fail  to  notice  parents  who  are  prone  to 
such  suggestions  expressing  rural  discontent.  In  the  same  way 
suspiciousness  or  jealousy  with  reference  to  particular  neighbors 
or  associates  leads,  when  it  is  often  expressed  before  children,  to 
general  suspiciousness  or  trivial  sensitiveness.  The  emotional 
obstacles  to  the  get-together  spirit — obstacles  which  vex  the  rural 
worker — in  no  small  degree  have  their  origin  in  suggestions  given 
in  childhood. 

The  country  is  concerned  with  another  source  of  suggestion 
which  has  more  to  do  with  the  efficiency  of  the  rural  mind  than  its 
content,  and  that  is  the  matter  of  sex.  Students  of  rural  life 
apparently  give  this  element  less  attention  than  it  deserves.  As 
Professor  Ross  has  pointed  out  in  South  of  Panama,  for  example, 


MENTAL  AND  MORAL  ASPECTS  181 

the  precocious  development  of  sex  tends  to  enfeeble  the  intellect 
and  to  prevent  the  largest  kind  of  mental  capacity.  It  is  unsafe 
at  present  to  generalize  regarding  the  differences  between  country 
and  city  life  in  matters  of  sex,  but  it  is  certainly  true  when  rural 
life  is  empty  of  commanding  interests  and  when  it  is  coarsened  by 
low  traditions  and  the  presence  of  defective  persons  that  there  is 
a  precocious  emphasis  of  sex.  This  is  expressed  both  by  early 
marrying  and  by  loose  sex  relations.  It  is  doubtful  whether  the 
commercializing  of  sex  attraction  in  the  city  has  equal  mental 
significance,  for  certainly  science  clearly  shows  that  it  is  the  pre- 
cocious expression  of  sex  that  has  largest  psychic  dangers.  In  so 
far  as  the  environment  of  a  rural  community  tends  to  bring  to 
early  expression  the  sexual  life,  we  have  every  reason  to  suppose 
that  at  this  point  at  least  the  influence  of  the  community  is  such 
as  to  lead  to  a  comparative  mental  arrest  or  a  limiting  of  mental 
ability,  for  which  the  country  later  suffers  socially.  Each 
student  of  rural  life  must,  from  experience  and  observation, 
evaluate  for  himself  the  significance  of  this  sex  precociousness. 
When  sex  interests  become  epidemic  and  the  general  tendency  is 
toward  precocious  sex  maturity,  the  country  community  is  pro- 
ducing for  itself  men  and  women  of  inferior  resources  as  com- 
pared with  their  natural  possibilities.  Even  the  supposed  social 
wholesomeness  of  earlier  marrying  in  the  country  must  be 
scrutinized  with  the  value  of  sex  sublimation  during  the  forma- 
tive years  clearly  in  mind. 


THE  NEED  OF  IDEALS  IN  RUEAL  LIFE  l 

KENYON   L.   BUTTERPIELD 

ONE  grave  danger  to  permanent  rural  progress  is  the  low  level 
of  ideals,  determined  by  community  standards.  It  is  not  that 
the  average  ideals  are  lower  than  in  the  city.  I  think  they  are 
higher.  But  they  come  perilously  close  to  a  dead  level  in  im- 
mense areas  of  country.  There  is  an  absence  of  that  high 
idealism  that  acts  as  yeast  upon  the  whole  mass,  which  often  pre- 

i  From  "The  Country  Church  and  the  JUiral  Problem,"  pp.  75-78, 
(Copyright  1911,  the  University  of  Chicago  Press.) 


182  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

vails  in  cities.  It  is  harder  to  rise  above  the  conventions  in  the 
country,  simply  because  there  are  few  strata  of  popular  habit. 
In  the  city  there  are  many ;  the  individual  can  pass  from  one  to 
another.  Things  are  reduced  to  simpler  terms  in  the  country. 
This  has  its  advantages,  but  it  tends  to  blight  budding  ideals  or 
to  drive  them  out  for  development  elsewhere — usually  in  the  city. 

As  a  consequence  the  rural  community  is  in  constant  danger 
of  stagnation — of  settling  down  into  the  easy  chairs  of  satisfac- 
tion. Rural  life  needs  constant  stimulus  of  imported  ideas — a 
stimulus  of  suggestion  apart  from  its  daily  routine. 

Moreover,  rural  ideals  sometimes  lack  breadth  and  variety. 
Life  in  the  country  easily  becomes  monotonous,  humdrum.  It 
needs  broadening,  as  well  as  elevating.  It  needs  variety,  gaiety. 
But  these  changes  can  find  their  proper  stimulus  only  in  motives 
that  are  high  and  worthy.  Hence  an  appeal  must  be  made  for 
the  cultivation  of  ideals  of  personal  development  and  neighbor- 
hood advancement. 

When  ideals  do  come  into  country  life,  they  are  apt  to  be  not 
indigenous,  but  urban  notions  transplanted  bodily.  Urban  ideals 
may  often  be  grafted  onto  some  strong  rural  stock.  Transplan- 
tation is  dangerous.  Some  one  must  be  at  work  in  the  country 
neighborhoods  breeding  a  new  species  of  aspirations  out  of  the 
common  hardy  varieties  that  have  proved  their  worth. 

Lack  of  ideals  is  in  a  sense  responsible  for  the  drift  away 
from  the  farm.  Some  people  leave  the  country  because  they  can 
not  realize  their  ideals  in  the  existing  rural  atmosphere.  Others 
go  because  they  have  no  thought  of  the  possibilities  of  country 
life. 

In  a  former  chapter  attention  was  called  to  the  fact  that  rural 
life  is  more  full  of  poetry  than  any  other.  But  rural  romance  is 
often  stifled  in  the  atmosphere  of  drudgery  and  isolation.  This 
high  sentiment  is  of  the  soul  and  can  come  only  as  the  soul  ex- 
pands. It  is  not  merely  an  enjoyment  of  trees,  crops,  and  ani- 
mals. It  is  in  part  a,  sense  of  exaltation  born  of  contact  with 
God  at  work.  It  has  in  it  an  element  of  triumph  because  great 
powers  are  being  harnessed  for  man's  bidding.  It  has  in  it 
somewhat  of  the  air  of  freedom,  because  of  dealing  with  forces 
free  and  wild  except  as  they  are  held  in  leash  by  an  unseen  Mas- 
ter driver.  It  has  in  it  much  of  worship,  because  of  all  the  deep 


MENTAL  AND  MORAL  ASPECTS  183 

mysteries  of  seed  and  soil,  and  because  of  the  everlasting,  patient 
procession  of  the  seasons  and  their  vicissitudes. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Anderson,  W.  L.     The  Country  Town.     Baker,  N.  Y.,  1906. 

The  Rural  Mind.     Homiletic  Review,  N.  Y.,  July,  1009. 
Bailey,  L.  H.     Countryman  and  Cityman.     In  his  The  Outlook  to  Na- 
ture, pp.  90-97,  Macrnillan,  N.  Y.,  1905. 
The  Democratic  Basis  in  Agriculture.     In  his  The  Holy  Earth,  pp. 

139-150,  Scribner,  N.  Y.,  1916. 
The  Farmer's  Fatalism.     In  his   Training  of  Farmers,   pp.   71-73, 

Century,  N.  Y.,  1909. 
The  Spiritual  Contact  with  Nature.     In  his  The  Holy  Earth,  pp. 

75-80,  Scribner,  N.  Y.,  1916. 
The  Underlying   Training   of   a   People.     In   his   The  Holy   Earth, 

pp.  39-42,  Scribner,  N.  Y.,  1916. 
Why  Do  Some  Boys  Take  to  Farming.     In  his  Training  of  Farmers, 

pp.  89-115,  Century,  N.  Y.,  1916. 
Bernard,    L.    L.     Theory    of    Rural    Attitudes.     American    Jour,    of 

Sociology,  22 :  630-49,  March,  1917. 
Butterfield,  K.  L.     Culture  from  the   Corn-Lot.     In  his   Chapters  in 

Rural  Progress,  pp.  66-77,  Univ.  of  Chicago  Press,  1908. 
Coulter,   John   B.     Marriage   and   Divorce   in    North    Dakota.     Amer. 

Jour,  of  Sociology,  12^:  398-417. 
Country    the    Natural     Birthplace     of     Talent.     Harper's     Monthly; 

106 :  649-53,  March,  1903. 
Davies,  George  E.     Social  Environment  and  Eugenics.     In  his  Social 

Environment,  pp.  82-131,  McClurg,  Chicago,  1917. 
deCrevecoeur,   J.    H.    St.   John.     Letters  from   an   American   Farmer. 

Duffield,  N.  Y.,  1904. 
Emerson,  Ralph  W.     Society  and  Solitude.     In  his  Complete  Works, 

7:9-20,   (Riverside  Edition),  Houghton,  N.  Y.,  1898. 
Fairchild,  George  T.     Personal  Attainments.     In  his  Rural  Wealth  and 

Welfare,  pp.  45-48,  Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1900. 
Gold,  Guy  D.     The  Psychology  of  the  Country  Boy.     Rural  Manhood 

2:107-109,  April,  1911. 
Groves,  Ernest  R.     The  Mind  of  the  Farmer.     In  his  Rural  Problems 

of  To-day,  Chap.  8,  pp.  117-33,  Assn.  Press,  N.  Y.,  1918. 
Holmes,     Roy     Hinman.     The     Passing     of     the     Farmer.    Atlantic 

110 :  517-23,  October,  1912. 

Lewis,  0.  F.     The  Tramp  Problem,  Annals,  40:217-227,  March,  1912. 
Lighton,  William  R.     Letters  of  an  Old  Farmer  to  His  Son.     Doran, 

N.  Y.,  1914. 
Plunkett,  Sir  Horace.     The  Human  Factor  in  Rural  Life.     Outlook, 

94:354-9,  Feb.,  1910. 
Ripley,    W.    Z.     Ethnic    Stratification    and    Urban    Selection.     In    his 

Races  of  Europe,   Chapter  20,  Appleton,  N.  Y.     Found  also  in 

Carver's  Sociology  and  Social  Progress/  pp.  676-696,  Ginn,  Boston, 

1906. 
Ross,  Edward  A.     Folk  Depletion  as  a  Cause  of  Rural  Decline.     Amer. 

Sociological  Society  Publications,  11 :  21-30,  December,  1916. 


184  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Sanderson,  Dwight.  The  Farmer  and  Child  Welfare.  Conf.  of  Social 
Work,  1919,  pp.  26-33. 

Smith,  Asa  D.  Soil  and  Mind  Culture.  4th  Annual  Report  of  the 
New  Hampshire  Board  of  Agriculture,  pp.  257-265,  Concord,  1874. 

Vogt,  Paul  L.  Rural  Morality.  In  his  Introduction  to  Rural  So- 
ciology, pp.  203-220.  Applet  on,  N.  Y.,  1917. 

Wallace,  Henry.  Description  of  an  Ideal  Rural  Civilization.  Men  and 
Religion  Messages — Rural  Church,  pp.  14—27,  Vol.  VI,  Association 
Press,  New  York,  1912. 

Wallace,  Henry.     Letters  to  the  Farm  Boy.     Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1902. 

Waters,  H.  J.  The  Means  at  Hand  for  the  Development  of  an  Ideal 
and  Rural  Civilization.  Men  and  Religion  Messages — Rural 
Church,  pp.  27-47,  Vol.  VI,  Association  Press,  N.  Y.,  1912. 

Where  the  Great  are  Born,  World's  Work,  IS :  11645,  June,  1909. 

Woods,  Frederick  A.  Birthplaces  of  Leading  Americans  and  the 
Question  of  Heredity.  Science,  N.  S.  30: 17-21,  July  2,  1909;  also 
205-9,  August  13,  1909. 

City  Boys  vs.  Country  Boys.     Science,  N.  S.  29 :  577-9,  April  9,  1909. 
The   Share   of   Vermont   in   the   Production    of   Distinguished    Men. 
Amer.  Statistical  Assn.  Publications,  pp.  761-3.     Boston,  Septem- 
ber, 1911. 

Woodward,  M.  Influence  of  the  Summer  Resident  upon  Country  Life. 
Countryside  Magazine,  22 :  320,  May,  1916. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

EUEAL  HEALTH— PHYSICAL  AND  MENTAL 
A.     RURAL  HEALTH— PHYSICAL 

A  SOCIOLOGIST'S  HEALTH  PROGRAM  FOR  THE 
RURAL  COMMUNITY1 

L.    L.    BERNARD 

NOT  the  only  dangers  to  human  beings  come  from  physical 
violence,  although  in  these  times  of  war  and  international  unrest 
we  are  too  prone  to  forget  or  neglect  the  subtler  evils.  The 
menaces  to  morals  and  to  health  have  much  more  disastrous 
effects,  not  alone  because  they  claim  more  victims  by  actual 
count,  even  in  war  time,  than  does  physical  violence,  but  also 
because  they  are  so  much  more  secretive  in  their  methods,  and 
of  all  enemies  their  approach  is  the  most  unseen.  As  Professor 
Carver  says,  "When  people  realize  clearly  that  babies  can  be 
killed  with  fly-infected  food  as  well  as  with  an  ax,  they  ought 
to  be  as  willing  to  work  as  hard  to  exterminate  the  fly  as  they 
would  to  exterminate  a  gang  of  murderers  who  went  about  killing 
babies  with  axes. ' '  But  the  problem  of  getting  people  to  realize 
the  dangers  of  germ  diseases  and  moral  pitfalls  is  a  very  difficult 
one.  Merely  the  relatively  uneducated  eye  can  perceive  the 
dangers  of  physical  violence,  but  it  requires  a  mind  educated  in 
at  least  the  rudiments  of  the  theory  of  germ  diseases  and  sanita- 
tion to  apprehend  the  dangers  to  both  young  and  old  from  flies, 
mosquitoes,  tubercle,  and  intestinal  bacilli.  The  one  is  capable 
of  dramatic  presentation,  while  the  other  is  for  most  people  in- 
formation of  a  highly  prosaic  character. 

Likewise,  warfare  against  the  one  appeals  readily  and  vividly 
to  the  imagination  and  can  be  waged  more  or  less  directly,  while 

i  Adapted  from  "The  New  Chivalry— Health,"  pp.  349-358.  (Southern 
Sociological  Congress,  May,  1915.) 

185 


186  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

war  against  bad  health  or  bad  morals  requires  much  more  thought 
and  constancy  of  purpose  for  its  planning  than  most  people  are 
willing  to  give.  For  these  reasons  it  may  be  worth  while  to  set 
forth  here  a  few  suggestions  for  a  program  which  may  be  of  some 
value  both  for  acquainting  the  people  of  the  rural  community 
with  the  hidden  menace  to  their  health  and  for  enabling  them  to 
overcome  these  dangers  by  eradicating  their  causes.  Good  health 
is  one  of  the  primary  conditions  of  a  strong  and  progressive  civil- 
ization. Where  it  is  lacking  most  of  the  other  human  ills  flourish 
also.  Where  it  is  present  there  is  energy  and  will  for  the  most 
difficult  tasks  of  society. 

The  country  is  behind  the  city  in  both  the  matter  of  informa- 
tion regarding  sanitary  conditions  and  in  the  application  of  the 
methods  of  sanitation.  This  is  true  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
country  has  some  decided  hygienic  and  sanitary  advantages  in 
the  way  of  an  abundance  of  sunlight  and  fresh  air  and,  for  a 
large  portion  of  the  year,  of  fresh  food  in  greater  quantities  than 
the  city  can  afford.  There  is  also  an  abundance  cf  physical 
exercise  in  the  country,  but  unfortunately  of  such  a  one-sided 
character  that  it  does  not  develop  the  body  harmoniously,  but 
tends  in  many  cases  to  strain  and  to  impair  certain  tissues  and 
organs.  These  are  largely  natural  advantages.  For  the  most 
part  the  disadvantages  of  the  country  in  a  sanitary  way  are  the 
result  of  man's  own  negligence  rather  than  inherent  in  the  nature 
of  the  country  itself.  In  the  country  as  yet  there  is  almost  every- 
where less  sanitary  inspection,  and  there  is  consequently  less 
sanitary  control  over  such  matters  as  the  drainage  of  mosquito- 
breeding  swamps,  the  disposal  and  destruction  of  noxious  refuse 
and  dead  animals,  the  inspection  of  the  water  supply  and  the 
milk  supply,  and  less  control  of  diseased  and  poisonous  animals, 
such  as  the  dog  infected  with  rabies  and  dangerous  snakes.  This 
lack  of  sanitary  inspection  and  control  is  not  alone  due  to 
ignorance,  but  is  also  in  large  part  traceable  to  the  economic 
costs  of  carrying  out  such  programs  of  sanitation,  and  perhaps 
equally  as  often  to  the  lack  of  proper  social  and  economic  ma- 
chinery or  organization  for  getting  it  done. 

The  country  is  also  less  well  supplied  with  many  of  the  san- 
itary and  health  aids  which  are  coming  to  be  relatively  so  plenti- 
ful in  the  cities,  such  as  good  physicians  within  reasonable  calling 


RURAL  HEALTH— PHYSICAL  187 

distance,  the  district  or  visiting  nurse,  hospitals  and  dispensaries. 
The  country  also  is  too  frequently  lacking  in  such  other  hygienic 
and  health  aids  as  public  and  private  bathing  facilities,  regular 
and  well  regulated  exercise  and  recreation,  protection  from  sud- 
den changes  in  temperature  and  inclement  weather.  But  on  the 
other  hand  the  country  does  not  suffer  so  extensively  from  the 
health-destroying  vices  which  are  so  common  in  the  cities, 
especially  excessive  alcoholism,  drug  addiction,  and  the  venereal 
diseases.  Most  of  the  leading  diseases,  in  fact,  are  recorded  in 
census  returns  as  being  more  prevalent  in  the  cities  than  in  the 
country  districts.  There  are  certain  notable  exceptions  to  this 
general  rule.  The  rural  communities  exceed  in  malaria,  in- 
fluenza, dysentery,  peritonitis,  and  the  diseases  of  the  nervous 
and  circulatory  systems,  and  possibly  also  in  pellagra  and  hook- 
worm. Some  health  authorities  have  also  attributed  much  of  the 
cities'  excess  rate  of  typhoid  to  rural  vacations  and  an  infected 
milk  supply,  though  the  responsibility  probably  rests  more 
properly  upon  the  cities'  infected  water  supply.  The  cities' 
excessive  rate  in  certain  of  the  largely  prevalent  diseases,  such 
as  measles,  whooping  cough,  diphtheria,  croup,  scarlet  fever,  and 
pneumonia,  is  due  primarily  to  the  high  contagiousness  of  these 
affections  which  operates  to  advantage  in  crowded  communities. 
The  country's  excess  in  the  diseases  earlier  enumerated  above,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  not  traceable  to  the  contagiousness  of  the 
diseases,  but  to  the  inferior  sanitation  which  exists  there,  and  in 
some  cases  to  physical  and  nervous  overstrain. 

Thus  the  comparative  statistics  of  rural  and  urban  health 
indicate  clearly  to  us  the  difficulties  in  each  case.  In  the  country 
the  difficulty  is  clearly  lack  of  sanitation  and  physical  and  mental 
hygiene.  What  then  is  our  program  for  removing  these  abnor- 
mal conditions?  There  are  a  great  many  things  that  can  and 
should  be  done.  It  will  suffice  here  perhaps  to  suggest  and  out- 
line a  few  of  the  more  important  of  these. 

Perhaps  the  primary  condition  for  the  establishment  of  better 
health  in  the  rural  community  is  the  provision  of  a  competent 
health  officer  and  sanitary  inspector,  one  who  not  only  under- 
stands the  dangers  and  difficulties  of  rural  sanitary  conditions, 
but  who  also  has  the  legal  powers  arid  the  courage  to  enforce  the 
changes  which  are  necessary.  A  number  of  states  already  make 


188  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

provision  for  a  county  health  officer,  but  usually  he  has  insuffi- 
cient powers  with  which  to  enforce  reforms  or  he  is  paid  for  too 
small  a  portion  of  his  time,  or  his  appointment  is  of  too  political 
a  character,  to  secure  the  efficiency  which  so  important  a  function 
as  his  requires.  The  fact  remains  that  rural  health  inspection 
is  far  behind  that  which  is  carried  on  in  the  cities,  and  sanitary 
enforcement  is  much  more  nearly  adequate  in  the  cities  than  in 
the  country  districts.  In  order  to  secure  the  greatest  efficiency 
in  this  work  its  administrative  direction  should  center  in  the 
State  Board  of  Health,  which  should  have  adequate  powers  of 
control  over  it. 

A  closely  related  need  for  the  protection  of  rural  health  is 
the  collection  and  publication  of  vital  statistics,  including  statis- 
tics of  disease  as  well  as  of  births  and  deaths.  This  function  may 
be  performed  by  or  under  the  direction  of  the  rural  health 
officer  or  by  a  separate  agency.  In  either  case  the  statistics  entire 
should  be  made  immediately  available  to  all  civic  and  private 
agencies  interested  in  the  health  of  the  rural  community.  Sta- 
tistics of  health  and  of  births  and  deaths  have  the  same  value  for 
the  rural  community  as  for  the  urban;  they  point  out  the  weak 
spots  in  the  community's  health  and  thus  indicate  where  work 
needs  to  be  done.  By  the  aid  of  such  statistics  polluted  water 
supplies,  soils  polluted  with  hookworm,  larva?,  breeding  places 
for  flies  and  mosquitoes,  the  need  of  instruction  in  dietetics  and 
other  matters  of  household  science  and  management  can  be 
indicated.  It  is  therefore  absolutely  essential  to  proper  health 
administration  in  the  rural  community  that  accurate  and  ade- 
quate vital  statistics  be  collected  and  published. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten,  of  course,  that  no  community,  urban 
or  rural,  can  be  given  proper  sanitary  and  hygienic  conditions 
unless  there  are  proper  laws  prescribing  minimum  sanitary  con- 
ditions and  giving  adequate  powers  to  the  officer  or  officers  having 
the  protection  of  health  in  charge.  Therefore  most,  if  not  all,  of 
our  states  will  have  to  legislate  anew  for  the  control  of  rural 
sanitation.  The  large  essentials  of  the  health  code  should  be 
uniform  over  the  state,  as  uniform  in  fact  as  are  the  health  needs, 
while  the  problems  of  a  purely  local  nature  may  conceivably  be 
left  to  the  administrative  discretion  of  the  county  courts  or  boards 
of  commissioners.  But  whatever  body  may  enact  the  health  laws 


RURAL  HEALTH— PHYSICAL  189 

they  should  be  reasonably  uniform,  and  adequate  and  thorough 
administrative  enforcement  should  be  provided  for,  But  where 
adequate  laws  and  administrative  machinery  for  rural  sanitary 
protection  do  not  exist — and  such  apparently  is  everywhere  the 
case  at  the  present  time — much  may  still  be  accomplished  through 
community  cooperation,  provided  only  there  is  leadership  and  the 
dwellers  in  the  community  are  made  to  see  clearly  the  connection 
between  sanitary  measures  and  improved  health.  The  health  of 
most  of  the  rural  communities  of  the  South  could  be  vastly  im- 
proved without  any  considerable  visible  economic  outlay  merely 
through  voluntary  cooperative  drainage  of  swamps  or  wet  places, 
oiling,  covering,  or  filling  unused  wells,  the  disposal  of  all  wastes, 
and  the  formation  of  rural  improvement  societies  or  clubs  for  the 
purpose  of  observing  properties  for  the  detection  and  reporting 
of  improperly  cared  for  manure  piles,  the  accumulation  of  rain 
water  in  bottles  and  barrels  and  other  receptacles  about  the  house, 
and  other  nuisances,  and  for  the  creation  of  an  effective  public 
opinion  regarding  these  evils.  Here  the  problem  is  primarily  one 
of  education  and  effective  leadership  rather  than  of  laws,  or 
cooperative  labor  rather  than  of  a  budget  raised  through  taxation. 
Valuable  as  such  cooperative  enterprise  must  always  be  for  the 
protection  of  rural  health,  with  or  without  laws  and  administra- 
tion, it  can  never  completely  take  the  place  of  the  latter,  nor  will 
it  work  with  anything  like  the  uniformity  which  the  other  pro- 
vides. 

No  rural  health  program  can  claim  even  approximate  adequacy 
which  does  not  provide  for  the  district  or  visiting  nurse.  The 
visiting  nurse  has  been  an  indispensable  factor  in  the  health  im- 
provement of  the  cities  and  is  coming  to  be  recognized  as  one  of 
the  first  objectives  in  rural  health  campaigns.  Where  the  rural 
district  nurse  has  been  emplo3red  results  have  amply  justified 
the  expenditure  required.  Whether  the  nurse  operates  over  the 
whole  county  or  a  smaller  division  must  necessarily  depend  pri- 
marily upon  the  density  of  the  population  and  the  value  of 
property  for  taxation,  though  at  least  one  visiting  nurse  to  the 
township,  or  consolidated  school  district  where  such  exists,  should 
be  the  ultimate  goal.  In  those  States  where  township  divisions 
do  not  exist,  commissioner  districts  or  other  similar  divisions  may 
well  serve  as  geographic  units  for  her  services.  The  function 


190  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  the  visiting  nurse  is  normally  pretty  much  the  same  in  rural 
and  in  urban  communities.  She  should  be  available  for  advice 
and  help  wherever  there  is  illness  and  her  services  should  be  as 
much  educational  and  preventive  as  curative  or  ministrative. 
Her  spare  time  might  well  be  spent  in  instructing  mothers'  clubs 
and  similar  organizations,  in  social  center  or  institute  and  other 
extension  talks,  in  inspecting  school  children,  and  in  giving 
occasional  instructive  talks  to  them  regarding  the  care  of  their 
health  and  that  of  the  community.  No  other  person  perhaps 
can  be  of  equal  help  to  a  community  in  health  protection,  for  no 
other  comes  so  intimately  into  the  lives  of  the  people.  It  is 
probably  desirable  that  a  small  fee,  of  25  or  50  cents,  should  be 
charged  for  each  visit  she  makes,  but  this  fee  should  always  be  re- 
mitted upon  the  request  of  the  person  benefiting  from  the  services. 
In  no  case  should  her  salary  depend  in  whole  or  in  part  upon  the 
fees  collected,  but  it  should  be  met  out  of  the  regular  funds  of  the 
county  treasury,  and  the  laws  of  the  State  should  be  so  modified 
as  to  permit  of  this,  where  such  modification  is  necessary.  Hers 
is  as  important  a  function  as  that  of  any  other  public  servant  in 
the  county.  Transportation  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  problems 
to  be  met  in  this  connection,  but  it  is  by  no  means  insurmountable. 
Another  urgent  health  need  for  the  rural  community  is  that 
every  dweller  in  the  country  should  have  easy  access  to  a  hospital 
when  there  is  need  for  such.  Most  of  our  larger  cities  are  more 
or  less  adequately  supplied  with  hospitals  and  in  most  of  these 
there  is  always  a  limited  number  of  beds  which  are  available  even 
to  the  very  poor.  Only  the  wealthier  country  people  can  now 
afford  to  make  use  of  the  city  hospitals.  There  is  great  need  of 
county  or  district  hospitals  in  sufficient  number  and  with  facili- 
ties adequate  for  the  care  of  those  who  cannot  receive  proper 
attention  at  home.  In  most  cases  the  oversight  of  the  visiting 
nurse  will  insure  sufficient  expert  sanitary  care  for  the  person 
who  is  ill  in  his  own  home,  but  in  a  certain  number  of  cases 
either  the  gravity  of  the  disease,  the  lack  of  home  facilities,  or 
some  other  consideration  makes  it  highly  desirable,  if  not  im- 
perative, that  hospital  treatment  be  available.  Hospitals  are, 
of  course,  expensive  and  rarely  pay  for  themselves,  much  less 
would  they  be  able  to  do  so  if  operated  on  the  scale  and  for  the 
purposes  here  suggested.  But  hospitals  are  not  so  expensive  as 


RURAL  HEALTH— PHYSICAL  191 

disease  unchecked  or  improperly  cared  for,  and  this  is  a  fact 
which  should  be  more  generally  appreciated.  In  connection  with 
the  hospitals  there  should  be  provided  dispensaries  from  which 
medicines  may  be  distributed  to  the  poor,  who  would  not  other- 
wise procure  them,  at  cost  or  even  in  some  cases  free.  Ultimately 
we  may  also  hope  for  public  physicians,  though  such  does  not 
seem  to  be  immediately  realizable.  If  the  other  health  agencies 
here  described  are  effective,  there  should  be  less  need  for  the 
physician,  and  perhaps  the  fact  that  his  services  come  high  may  in 
some  degree  help  to  reenforce  the  value  of  the  counsels  of  the 
visiting  nurse. 

Already  I  have  mentioned  medical  inspection  of  schools  as 
one  of  the  distinctive  health  needs  of  the  rural  community.  Its 
value  is  now  too  generally  recognized  to  require  argument  by  way 
of  reinforcement.  To  supplement  it,  however,  there  should  be 
provided  a  carefully  planned  and  well  executed  educational  pro- 
gram for  the  improvement  of  rural  health.  Of  primary  im- 
portance in  this  program  is  the  instruction  of  school  children  in 
the  essential  facts  of  sanitation  and  personal  hygiene.  In 
many  of  the  better  rural  schools  much  has  already  been  accom- 
plished in  this  direction.  There  are  now  some  good  text  books 
on  the  subject  which  teach  in  a  practical  and  intelligible  way  the 
most  necessary  facts  regarding  health.  Perhaps  the  weakest  spot 
in  the  scheme  is  the  teacher  who  usually  has  studied  ancient 
languages  or  some  equally  esoteric  subject  to  the  neglect  of  such 
practical  matters  as  hygiene.  As  a  consequence  she  has  not  the 
experience  and  background  to  give  her  teaching  the  requisite 
reality.  It  is  here  therefore  that  occasional  lectures  by  the  visit- 
ing nurse  can  be  most  effective.  There  is  a  very  pressing  need 
that  we  revise  the  course  of  study  in  the  rural  as  well  as  in  the 
urban  schools  until  they  inform  us  about  the  lives  of  our  own 
times  and  people  rather  than  about  the  lives  and  languages  of 
peoples  who  lived  a  long  while  ago  and  whom  we  shall  never  see. 
It  is  indeed  a  poor  culture  which  does  not  teach  one  how  to  live 
well  in  his  own  day  and  world. 

The  teaching  of  health  and  hygiene  in  the  schools  will  reach 
the  young  people,  whom  after  all  it  is  most  important  to  reach. 
But  we  must  not  neglect  the  older  people  of  the  community,  for 
their  attitudes  of  encouragement  or  discouragement  will  affect 


192  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

profoundly  the  value  of  the  lessons  to  the  young,  as  well  as  hasten 
or  delay  the  actual  application  of  our  program  to  their  lives. 
Therefore  we  need  an  abundance  of  plain,  practical  extension 
teaching  on  this  subject.  Most  of  our  state  universities  are 
making  some  efforts  in  this  direction  and  the  State  Boards  of 
Health  are  frequently  doing  good  work  and  can  do  more  still. 
There  is  no  good  reason  why  health  extension  teaching  should 
not  be  made  available  wherever  it  proves  valuable.  It  can  be 
carried  on  through  local  clubs,  farmers'  institutes,  the  social 
center  where  one  has  been  developed,  the  rural  lecture  course,  and 
even  the  rural  church.  All  of  the  leading  facts  about  health  and 
sanitation  can  be  easily  and  clearly  presented  in  public  lectures 
and  through  bulletins,  and  people  will  be  interested  in  them 
when  so  offered.  Of  a  more  general  educational  nature,  but 
distinctly  valuable  in  its  way,  is  the  rural  health  survey. 

Two  diseases  from  which  the  rural  population  suffers  more 
than  the  urban  are  nervous  and  circulatory  derangements. 
Clearly  then  more  than  sanitation  alone,  perhaps  more  even  than 
health  teaching,  must  be  provided  for  the  rural  community. 
There  is  too  much  isolation,  life  is  too  monotonous,  there  is  too 
much  introspection,  too  much  brooding  over  problems  and  dif- 
ficulties by  the  rural  dweller  and  too  little  self-forgetfulness  in 
the  presence  of  others.  For  this  difficulty  we  must  prescribe  a 
better  social  life,  intercourse  which  gives  to  the  thought  new 
objects  of  attention  and  makes  life  seem  less  of  a  struggle  and  so 
little  a  pleasure.  Farm  women  especially  are  lacking  in  such 
contacts.  The  best  remedy  here  is  the  social  center  which 
cooperates  with  the  home.  If  contacts  are  to  be  broadened,  as 
they  should  be,  care  must  be  taken  that  they  be  made  restful 
rather  than  competitive  and  destructive  of  energy.  Another  in- 
direct menace  to  health  comes  from  the  excessive  severity  and 
duration  of  labor  on  the  farm  at  certain  times  of  the  year.  It 
may  not  be  possible  to  abolish  seasonal  labor  altogether,  nor  to 
find  machines  to  do  all  of  the  excessively  difficult  tasks,  but  a 
better  system  of  farm  management,  more  cooperation  in  farm 
labor,  and  a  better  understanding  of  the  dangers  of  physical  and 
nervous  overstrain  should  do  much  to  remove  some  of  the  worse 
evils  in  this  connection. 

The  various  methods  of  improving  rural  health  here  suggested 


RURAL  HEALTH— PHYSICAL  lS3 

will  not  come  of  themselves.  If  we  wish  to  see  them  realized,  we 
shall  have  to  work  for  them  at  least  as  strenuously  as  we  strive  for 
the  other  good  things  of  life. 


CITY  IS  HEALTHIER  FOR  CHILDREN  THAN 
THE  COUNTRY1 

THOMAS   D.    WOOD 

MORE  than  half  of  the  20,000,000  school  children  in  the  United 
States  are  attending  rural  schools. 

Country  children  attending  the  rural  schools  are  less  healthy 
and  are  handicapped  by  more  physical  defects  than  are  the 
children  of  the  cities  (including  all  the  children  of  the  slums). 
And  this  is  true,  in  general,  of  all  parts  of  the  United  States. 

My  conclusions  are  based  upon  all  the  available  official  sta- 
tistics of  school  children  gathered  from  all  parts  of  the  country. 
As  many  as  50  or  more  sources  of  information  were  used,  and 
the  results  compared  and  collated.  These  statistics  lack  uni- 
formity. They  contain,  doubtless,  many  errors,  but  there  are 
probably  as  many  errors  in  the  statistics  of  the  city  school  chil- 
dren as  in  those  of  children  in  the  rural  schools.  The  com- 
parative result,  therefore,  is  accurate. 

In  every  health  item  the  country  child  is  more  defective  than 
the  city  child.  This  is  a  most  surprising  reversal  of  popular 
opinion.  More  than  twice  as  many  country  children  suffer  from 
malnutrition  as  do  city  children;  the  former  are  also  more 
anemic,  have  more  lung  trouble,  and  include  more  mental  de- 
fectives than  do  the  latter. 

In  an  impartial  effort  to  ascertain  the  causes  of  present-day 
country  life,  so  far  as  health  and  welfare  are  concerned,  this  fact 
must  not  be  overlooked :  Artificial  selection,  during  the  last  half 
century  especially,  has  drawn  much  of  the  best  human  stock 
from  the  country  to  the  cities.  Before  that  time  the  tide  in  the 
movement  of  population  apparently  carried  more  good  human 
material  to  the  rural  regions  than  away  from  them. 

Another  reason  for  the  physical  inferiority  of  country  school 

i  Adapted  from  Philadelphia  Public  Ledger,  April  2,  1916. 


194  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

children  and  of  country  people  in  general  is  that  the  science  and 
art  of  human  living,  of  conserving  and  improving  human  health 
and  general  human  welfare,  have  advanced  much  more  rapidly 
in  the  cities  than  in  the  country  districts.  The  problems  of 
safety  and  comfort  as  affected  by  congestion  of  population  and 
many  other  conditions  of  urban  life  have  thrust  themselves  upon 
human  attention  and  have  received  much  consideration. 

The  art  of  human  care  has  progressed  much  more  slowly  in 
the  country.  The  father  in  the  city  spends,  on  the  average,  a 
larger  percentage  of  his  income  for  the  welfare  of  his  children 
than  does  the  father  on  the  farm.  The  farmer,  relatively,  raises 
everything  else  more  carefully  and,  as  a  rule,  more  successfully, 
than  his  children. 

Still  another  condition  which  helps  to  explain  this  astonishing 
inferiority  of  the  country  child  is  the  environment.  The  country 
home  and  the  country  school  are,  on  the  average,  less  sanitary 
and  healthful  than  the  city  home  and  the  city  school. 

It  has  been  assumed  that  because  the  country  child  has  all 
the  features  of  the  country,  he  is,  of  course,  surrounded  by  for- 
tunate and  wholesome  conditions.  But  the  possession  of  all 
outdoors  is  far  from  enough.  The  farmer's  home  is,  as  a  rule, 
insanitary  in  many  respects.  It  is  often  terribly  unventilated, 
and  the  dwellers  in  the  house  are  fed  many  hours  of  the  day  with 
bad  air.  Country  water  and  food  are  less  wholesome  than  water 
and  food  in  the  city.  The  standards  of  living  on  the  American 
farm,  when  tested  by  the  accepted  principles  of  sanitation  and 
hygiene,  are  alarmingly  defective. 

The  rural  school,  from  the  standpoint  of  health  and  general 
fitness  for  its  important  use,  is  the  worst  type  of  building  in  the 
whole  country,  including  not  only  all  types  of  buildings  used  for 
human  buildings,  but  also  those  used  for  livestock  and  all  do- 
mestic animals.  Rural  schools  are,  011  the  average,  less  adequate 
for  their  use  than  prisons,  asylums,  .almshouses,  stables,  dairy 
barns,  pig  pens,  chicken  houses,  dog  kennels  are  for  their  uses. 

In  the  city  the  best  ideas  are  more  readily  brought  into  contact 
with  all  of  the  people.  For  many  in  our  cities,  deprived  through 
poverty  of  the  material  necessities  of  life — intellectual  and  social 
as  well  as  physical — a  bounteous  philanthropy  frequently  sup- 


RURAL  HEALTH— PHYSICAL  195 

plies  the  lack.  In  the  country,  on  the  other  hand,  the  farmers 
must  be  persuaded  to  use  their  own  resources  to  provide  ade- 
quately for  the  welfare  of  their  families,  and,  most  of  all,  for 
their  children. 

To  carry  this  proposal  for  child  betterment  directly  to  the 
country  household  would  be  inadvisable  and  ineffective;  would 
often  arouse  resentment.  In  this  phase  of  human  education  the 
direct  approach  to  the  home  is  much  less  feasible  in  the  country 
than  in  the  city.  The  school  is,  however,  the  agency  endowed  by 
every  circumstance  for  the  accomplishment  of  this  great  special 
task  of  a  higher  civilization. 

After  careful  consideration  of  this  serious  problem  of  the 
relatively  deficient  health  of  the  children  in  rural  schools,  the 
Health  Committee  of  the  National  Council  of  Education,  in 
cooperation  with  the  corresponding  Health  Committee  of  the 
American  Medical  Association,  strongly  recommend  the  follow- 
ing measures  as  a  practical  program  for  the  solution  of  the  dif- 
ficulty : 

First — Health  examination  and  supervision  of  all  rural  school 
children. 

Second — The  service  of  the  school  or  district  nurse  to  provide 
the  practical  health  service  and  follow-up  work,  which  (it  has 
been  so  clearly  demonstrated  in  our  cities)  can  be  best  accom- 
plished by  the  school  nurse.  The  work  of  the  nurse  is  even  more 
vitally  important  in  rural  than  in  city  schools. 

Fourth — Warm  school  lunches  for  all  children  in  rural  as  well 
as  in  city  schools.  The  indirect  educational  benefits  of  the  school 
lunches  upon  the  children  and  the  homes  are  even  more  important 
than  the  immediate  health  improvement  of  the  children  them- 
selves. 

Fifth— Correction  of  physical  defects  which  are  interfering 
with  the  health,  the  general  development  and  progress  of  rural 
children.  For  this  remedial  and  constructive  health  service, 
practical  rural  equivalents  of  medical  clinics,  dental  clinics  and 
community  health  centers  of  the  cities  are  urgently  needed  in  all 
parts  of  the  United  States.  The  county  unit  organization  and 
administration  for  health  as  well  as  other  rural  interests  has 
already  proved  successful  and  promises  the  best  results.  Every 


196  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

county  should  have  one  full  time  health  officer,  one  or  more  school 
and  district  nurses,  and  one  or  more  community  health  centers 
to  provide  rational,  self-supporting  health  and  medical  service 
for  all  the  people. 

Sixth — Cooperation  of  physicians,  medical  organizations, 
health  boards,  and  all  other  available  organizations  in  the  rural 
health  program. 

'Seventh — Effective  health  instruction  for  the  rural  schools 
which  shall  aim  decisively  at  the  following  results : 

(a)  Establishment  of  health  habits  and  inculcation  of  lasting 
ideas  and  standards  of  wise  and  efficient  living  in  pupils. 

(b)  Extension  of  health  conduct  and  care  to  the  school,  to  the 
homes,  and  to  the  entire  community. 

Eighth — Better  trained  and  better  paid  teachers  for  rural 
schools,  who  shall  be  adequate  to  the  health  problems  as  well 
as  to  the  other  phases  of  the  "work  of  rural  education. 

Ninth — Sanitary  and  attractive  school  buildings,  which  are 
essential  to  the  health  of  pupils  and  teachers. 

Tenth — Generous  provision  of  space  and  facilities  for  whole- 
some play  and  recreation. 

Eleventh — Special  classes  and  schools  for  the  physically  and 
mentally  deficient,  in  which  children  may  receive  the  care  and 
instruction  requisite  for  their  exceptional  needs. 

Better  health  is  to  a  striking  extent  a  purchasable  commodity 
and  benefit.  Vast  sums  of  money  are  expended  from  public  and 
private  funds  for  the  amelioration  of  human  suffering  and  dis- 
ability in  the  attempt  to  salvage  the  wreckage  resulting  from  un- 
favorable earlier  conditions,  which  with  foresight  and  at  very 
moderate  cost  might  in  large  measure  have  been  prevented. 

Our  schools  are  spending  millions  in  educating,  or  trying  to 
educate,  the  children  who  are  kept  back  by  ill-health,  when  the 
expenditure  of  thousands  in  a  judicious  health  program  would 
produce  a-n  extraordinary  saving  in  economy  and  efficiency.  A 
dollar  saved  in  a  wise,  constructive  effort  to  conserve  a  child's 
health  and  general  welfare  will  be  more  fruitful  to  the  child  and 
for  the  general  good  than  a  thousand  times  that  sum  delayed  for 
twenty  years.  The  principle  of  thrift  in  education  finds  its 
first  and  most  vital  application  in  the  conservation  and  improve- 
ment of  the  health  of  the  children. 


RURAL  HEALTH— PHYSICAL  197 

HEALTH   WORK  IN   CITY   AND   RURAL  SCHOOLS  OF   THE 
UNITED    STATES 

ACTIVITY.  FOB  CITY  CHILDREN        FOR  COUNTRY  CHILDREN 

Medical  inspection  laws     Mandatory     for     cities     Mandatory     for     rural 
in  23   States  only  in  12  States  schools  in  7  States 

Mandatory   laws  Apply  to  all  cities  In  7  States 

Permissive    laws  Enforced  in  most  cities     In   6   of  the   13   States 

having  such  laws 

Medical      inspection  In   13   States,   in   parts 

practiced  In  over  400  cities  of   130  counties 

Dental     inspection     by  Permitted   in   2   States, 

dentists  In  69  cities  but  not  yet  provided 

Dental  clinics  In  50  cities  In     one    rural     county 

( St.    John's    County, 
Fla.) 

Clinics  for  eye,  nose, 
throat  and  other  de- 
fects In  cities  None 

Nurses  750  in*  135  cities  In  12-20  rural  districts 

Open  air  classes  In  cities  only 

Athletics     and     recrea-     Virtually  all  cities  and     Little       provision       in 
tion;    organized  with         large  towns  rural   schools 

appropriate   facilities 
and    equipment 

Warm       lunches       in     In  over  90  cities  in  21     In      a     few      scattered 
schools  States  schools  in  9  States 


RURAL  SANITATION:    DEFINITION,  FIELD,  PRIN- 
CIPLES, METHODS,  AND  COSTS1 

W.   S.   RANKIN,   M.   D. 

THE  word  sanitation  refers  to  civic  life ;  'the  term  rural  sanita- 
tion refers  to  rural  civic  life;  the  constituted  and  the  common 

i  Adapted  from  American  Journal  of  Public  Health,  Vol.  VI,  pp.  554- 
558,  June,  1916. 


198  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

organ  through  which  rural  civic  life  finds  expression  is  the  county 
government;  therefore,  we  may  define  rural  sanitation  as  the 
administration  of  sanitary  measures  by  or  through  the  county 
government.  Rural  sanitation  finds  its  parallel  in  urban  sanita- 
tion, and  county  sanitation  its  parallel  in  municipal  sanitation. 

The  field  of  rural  sanitation  includes  more  than  99  per  cent, 
of  the  area  and  more  than  half  of  the  population  of  the  United 
States. 

Rural  sanitation  should  be  initiated  by  the  state,  but  executed 
through  the  rural  civic  machinery,  the  county  government.  The 
state  should  initiate,  because  the  state  is  the  only  existing  force 
that  can  initiate  rural  or  county  health  work.  The  county  gov- 
ernment must  carry  on  the  rural  sanitation  initiated  by  the  state 
for  two  reasons:  First,  should  the  states  undertake  to  execute, 
as  well  as  initiate,  rural  sanitary  measures,  all  of  the  states,  with 
a  few  exceptions,  would  soon  realize  that  their  undertaking  was 
far  beyond  their  means ;  second,  no  one,  or  no  agency  should  do 
for  otbrrs  what  they  can  do  for  themselves,  as  such  practice  leads 
toward  dependence  and  indifference  a«d  away  from  independence 
and  appreciation.  The  people  are  able,  when  properly  shown,  to 
care  for  themselves,  and  it  is  better  for  them  to  do  this  than  to 
have  it  done  for  them. 

The  independence  of  the  county  as  a  governmental  unit  de- 
mands a  plan  of  rural  health  work  that  will  permit  the  more 
progressive  counties  to  go  forward,  liberating  such  counties  from 
the  possible  retarding  influence  of  the  backward  counties — in 
short,  a  plan  that  permits  of  leadership  and  healthy  rivalry 
among  counties. 

The  multiplicity  of  rural  governments  is  a  greater  rural  sani- 
tary asset,  affording  a  corresponding  multiplicity  of  opportunity. 
There  are  2,953  county  governments  in  the  United  States,  an 
average  of  66  to  the  state.  The  county  governments  of  the 
average  state  hold  over  a  thousand  meetings  a  year;  at  practi- 
cally all  of  these  meetings  the  state 's  representatives  .are  welcome 
and  can  get  a  hearing.  If  the  state  health  officer  has  a  reasonable 
proposition,  with  good  argument  behind  it  and  not  too  big  a 
budget  in  front  of  it,  he  can  influence  the  county  to  take  one, 
two,  or  three  steps  toward  a  cleaner  civic  life.  Every  meeting 
of  the  county  government  is  a  challenge  to  the  state  department 


RURAL  HEALTH— PHYSICAL  199 

of  health  to  show  the  county  its  sanitary  needs  and  how  to  meet 
them. 

Rural  sanitation  must  be  developed  on  a  smaller  budget  than 
the  budget  for  urban  sanitation.  The  country  is  poor.  What 
the  exact  difference  between  the  urban  and  rural  per  capita 
wealth  is  in  the  United  States,  no  one  knows,  but  we  do  know 
that  rural  per  capita  wealth  is  much  less  than  the  urban  per 
capita  wealth. 

The  influence  of  epidemicity  is  weaker  in  rural  than  in  urban 
life,  and  rural  quarantine  measures  need  not  be  as  rigid  as 
urban  quarantine  measures. 

Rural  sanitation  will  be  influenced  by  the  individualism  of 
the  country.  The  ruralite  (a  term  more  expressive  than 
orthodox)  is  individualistic;  the  urbanite  is  communistic.  The 
errors  of  individualism  are  best  treated  by  education ;  the  errors 
of  communism  are  best  treated  by  legislation ;  therefore,  sanitary 
education  is  relatively  more  important  in  rural  sanitation  than 
in  urban  sanitation,  while  the  reverse  is  true  for  sanitary  legis- 
lation. 

There  are  two  general  methods  by  which  a  county  may  have 
sanitary  measures  carried  out:  First,  the  county  may  do  its 
own  work;  second,  the  county  may  have  its  work  done  by  some 
outside  agency.  The  whole-time  county  health  officer  is  usually 
regarded  as  the  best  solution  by  the  first  method,  while  the  unit 
or  contract  system  of  county  health  work  furnishes,  probably, 
the  best  solution  by  the  second  method. 

The  unit  system  of  county  health  work  assumes,  first,  the 
divisibility  of  county  health  problems  into  fairly  independent 
units  of  health  work ;  second,  that  a  county  may  get  better  work 
for  less  money  by  paying  the  State  Board  of  Health  just  what  it 
costs  to  complete  a  certain  piece  of  work  than  by  attempting  to 
do  the  work  itself.  Several  illustrations  will  make  the  practica- 
bility of  the  unit  system  clear  and  perhaps  better  appreciated. 

Illustration  No.  1. — The  North  Carolina  State  Board  of  Health 
proposed  to  and  contracted  with  ten  counties  for  a  county  ap- 
propriation of  $500  to  administer  free  typhoid  immunization  to 
those  citizens  of  the  ten  counties  who  wished  to  be  immunized. 
In  the  first  set  of  five  counties  we  gave  complete  treatment  to 
26,537  people;  when  we  completed  the  work  in  the  next  five 


200  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

counties,  50,000  people  in  the  ten  counties  will  have  been  vacci- 
nated against  typhoid  fever.  This  is  about  one-eighth  of  the 
population  of  the  counties  treated.  In  several  counties  about 
one-third  of  the  population  has  been  treated. 

Illustration  No.  2. — Our  principal  fall  and  winter  work  in 
rural  sanitation  will  be  executing  contracts  for  the  following 
unit  of  school  work:  For  a  county  appropriation  of  $10  for 
each  school  in  the  county  the  State  Board  of  Health  agrees  to 
arrange  through  the  county  school  authorities  and  with  the 
teachers  a  program  of  consecutive  health  days  for  each  school  as 
follows :  Two  weeks  before  health  day  the  principal  of  the  school 
receives  from  the  State  Board  of  Health  a  batch  of  hand  bills 
announcing  a  date  and  program  for  health  day.  The  hand  bills 
also  carry  an  invitation  to  the  patrons  of  the  school  to  attend  the 
exercises.  The  teacher  distributes  these  notices  through  the 
children  to  the  school  community.  The  representative  of  the 
State  Board  of  Health  arrives  at  the  school  at  ten  A.  M.  on 
health  day.  He  makes  a  fifteen  minute  talk  to  the  children  and 
visitors  on  the  importance  of  a  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  health. 
He  then  makes  a  medical  inspection  of  the  pupils  and  gives  each 
defective  child  a  card  to  its  parents,  notifying  the  parents  of  the 
nature  of  the  defect  and  urging  the  parents  to  see  the  inspector 
after  the  evening  exercises.  The  inspector  mails  a  report  of  the 
inspection  to  the  State  Board  of  Health,  which,  through  a  system 
of  follow-up  letters,  keeps  in  touch  with  the  parents  of  the  de- 
fective children  until  they  are  treated.  The  inspector  then 
questions  the  children  after  the  manner  of  the  old-time  spelling 
match  on  a  health  catechism,  which  has  been  supplied  to  the 
school  in  sufficient  number  at  least  one  month  prior  to  health 
day.  The  health  day  exercises  then  adjourn  until  8  P.  M.,  at 
which  time  the  exercises  are  resumed.  The  evening  exercises 
consist  of  from  three  to  four  short  illustrated  lectures  by  the 
inspector  on  the  more  important  subjects  of  sanitation,  inter- 
spersed with  the  reading  of  selected  compositions  by  the  school 
children.  The  last  item  on  the  program  will  be  the  awarding 
of  prizes,  the  first  for  the  best  knowledge  of  the  catechism  and 
the  second  for  the  best  composition.  The  inspector  will  grade, 
score-card  manner,  each  school  on  the  excellence  of  its  showing, 
on  health  day.  When  this  county  unit  is  completed,  a  county 


RURAL  HEALTH— PHYSICAL  201 

prize  will  be  awarded  to  that  school  giving  the  best  cooperation 
in  the  work ;  a  county  prize  will  be  awarded  for  the  best  com- 
position, and  another  prize  for  the  best  knowledge  of  the  health 
catechism.  The  inspector  can  handle  one  rural  school  a  day. 
It  will  take  two  or  three  days  to  handle  some  of  the  larger  vil- 
lage and  town  schools.  In  the  first  county  to  adopt  this  unit 
there  are  fifty-seven  schools  which  will  require  a  program  of 
practically  three  months.  The  inspector  will  have  very  hard 
work  for  five  days  in  the  week,  like  all  school  workers,  but  like 
them  will  have  Saturday  and  Sunday  to  rest.  This  unit  of 
health  work  couples  medical  inspection  of  school  children  with 
the  sanitary  instructions  of  the  entire  community,  young  and 
old  alike — the  young  through  the  catechism,  compositions,  and 
lectures,  and  the  old  through  the  lectures,  but  most  of  all 
through  the  help  the  children  will  demand  of  their  parents  in 
learning  the  catechism,  and  in  preparing  the  compositions. 

This  plan  of  contract  county  health  work  greatly  increases 
the  appropriation  of  the  State  Board  of  Health;  an  appropria- 
tion from  a  county  is  just  as  useful  in  doing  health  work  as  an 
appropriation  from  the  state.  This  plan  has  great  adaptability, 
and  I  might  say  extensibility  in  proportion  to  the  ingenuity  of  the 
operator;  under  it  a.  unit  of  infant  hygiene  work  may  be  de- 
veloped; under  it  a  unit  of  anti-malaria  work  may  be  carried 
out;  under  it  a  unit  of  anti-pellagra  work  may  be  executed; 
under  it  many  other  more  or  less  independent  county  health 
problems  may  be  successfully  attempted. 

Comparative  Value  of  Methods. — The  whole-time  county  health 
officer  idea  proposes  a  means — an  officer;  the  unit  or  contract 
system  of  county  health  work  .  proposes  an  end — the  execution 
of  the  plans  and  specifications  for  a  definite  piece  of  work. 

The  whole-time  county  health  officer  idea,  if  carried  out  by 
the  county  authorities,  is  subject  to  local  politics;  if  adminis- 
tered under  state  supervision  it  is  in  conflict  with  the  principle 
of  local  self-government.  The  unit  system  of  county  health 
work  is  not  subject  to  local  politics  and  does  not  conflict  with 
the  principles  of  local  self-government. 

The  whole-time  county  health  officer  plan  costs  the  county 
from  $3,000  to  $4,000  a  year,  and  is  available  to  only  a  compara- 
tively few  counties;  the  unit  system  of  work  costs  the  county 


202  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

from  $500  to  $2,000  a  year,  and  is  available  to  nearly  all 
counties. 

There  are  certain  counties  that  should  employ  whole-time 
health  officers,  but  the  contract  or  unit  system  of  county  health 
work  is  better  adapted  to  a  variety  of  county  conditions,  and 
will  be,  in  all  probability,  far  more  effective  than  the  whole- 
time  county  health  officer  plan  in  reducing  the  state's  death- 
rate.  The  unit  system  of 'county  health  work  is  important  as 
a  stepping  stone  to  the  whole-time  county  health  officer.  In 
leading  up  to  the  whole-time  count}^  health  officer,  the  unit  sys- 
tem standardizes  county  health  work,  so  that,  when  a  whole- 
time  county  health  officer  is  employed,  an  effective  plan  of 
county  health  work  will  have  been  established. 

The  unit  system  of  work  or  proposed  contract  submitted  by 
the  average  state  to  the  county  should  not  call  for  an  appropria- 
tion of  more  than  $1,000;  $500  is  better.  The  smaller  the  cost 
of  the  unit,  the  greater  is  the  probability  of  securing  the  funds 
with  which  to  start  county  health  work.  After  one  appropria- 
tion is  obtained  the  responsibility  is  then  largely  with  the  state 
for  making  such  use  of  it  as  to  pave  the  way  for  easier  and 
more  liberal  funds.  The  game  of  sanitation,  like  the  game  of 
life,  to  use  the  other  fellow's  grammar,  "is  not  in  holding  a 
good  hand  but  in  playing  a  bad  hand  good."  Even  the  novice 
can  get  results  with  plenty  of  money.  The  intelligent  health 
officer  never  loses  sight  of  relative  values,  and  the  real  fun  of 
the  game  is  in  getting  big  results  with  little  budgets.  "We  shall 
be  able  to  handle  the  county  contagious  disease  problem  for 
the  average  county  for  $300  to  $400  per  year.  We  will  carry 
out  the  school  unit  for  from  $500  to  $600  a  year  for  the  average 
county  or  for  fifteen  cents  per  pupil.  We  will  have  vaccinated 
50,000  people  in  ten  counties  by  September  11,  for  a  cost  to  the 
counties  of  about  ten  cents  for  each  person  immunized. 


RURAL  HEALTH— MENTAL  203 

B.    RURAL  HEALTH— MENTAL 
FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS  DEFINED  l 

E.    J.    EMERICK 

FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS  is  due  to  an  arrested  or  imperfect  cere- 
bral development.  By  most  authorities,  a  person  who  is  three 
or  more  years  retarded  is  considered  feeble-minded ;  for  instance, 
a  child  of  twelve  years,  whose  mental  development  is  that  of  a 
child  of  nine,  would  be  feeble-minded. 

The  feeble-minded  have  been  divided  into  three  classes:  (1) 
the  idiot,  (2)  the  imbecile,  and  (3)  the  moron. 

(1)  The  idiot  has  a  mentality  of  less  than  three  years.     He 
cannot  protect  himself  from  common  dangers. 

(2)  The  imbecile  has  a  mentality  of  from  three  to  seven  years. 
He  can  protect  himself  from  common  dangers,  but  cannot  be 
made  self-sustaining. 

(3)  The  moron  has  a  mentality  of  from  seven  to  twelve  years. 
He  is  ''capable  of  earning  his  living  under  favorable  circum- 
stances, but  is  incapable.  ...   (a)   of  competing  on  equal  terms 
with  his  normal  fellows,  or   (b)   of  managing  himself  and  his 
affairs  with  ordinary  prudence." 

No  one  needs  to  be  told  how  to  recognize  the  idiot  or  imbe- 
cile. Their  inability  to  care  for  themselves,  their  physical  stig- 
mata, and  obvious  mental  limitations  make  them  easily  dis- 
tinguished. For  this  reason,  they  do  not  constitute  a  serious 
problem ;  they  are  recognized  for  what  they  are,  and  disposed  of 
accordingly. 

The  moron,  on  the  other  hand,  may  present  no  physical  evi- 
dence of  deficiency ;  may  be  able  to  perform  quite  difficult  tasks ; 
may  read  and  write ;  and  may  talk  fluently,  sometimes  even  with 
a  certain  superficial  cleverness. 

This  is  the  class  that  makes  for  us  our  social  problems.  Here 
are  the  individuals  who  are  put  down  as  dull,  ignorant  or  shift- 
less, or  unwilling  to  exercise  their  judgment,  common  sense  and 
will-power.  Their  resemblance  to  the  normal  makes  it  difficult 

i  Adapted  from  "The  Problem  of  the  Feeble-minded,"  Publication  No  5, 
March,  1915.  Ohio  Board  of  Administration,  Columbus. 


204  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

for  many  to  believe  that  they  cannot  be  trained  to  do  as  normal 
people  do.  Bad  environment,  lack  of  opportunity,  ignorance, 
and  what  not,  are  given  as  causes  for  their  failure  to  function 
normally.  But  those  who  have  had  these  brighter  defectives  in 
institutions  for  the  feeble-minded,  and  have  watched  them  from 
childhood,  under  most  careful  training  and  instruction,  know 
that  they  never  develop  bej^ond  a  certain  stage :  and  know  that 
there  is  in  these  morons  a  lack  as  definite  as  in  any  other  form 
of  feeble-mindedness ;  a  lack  which  makes  it  impossible  for  them 
to  become  thoroughly  responsible. 

At  large,  the  moron  may  become  an  alcoholic,  prostitute,  sex 
offender,  thief,  or  graver  criminal;  he  is  almost  sure  to  be  on 
the  very  edge  of  the  poverty  line,  if  not  an  actual  pauper.  Dr. 
'Goddard  tells  us  "Every  feeble-minded  person  is  a  potential 
criminal,"  and  this  is  particularly  true  of  the  moron — the  high- 
grade  defective,  who  passes  for  normal,  yet  who  lacks  in  whole 
or  part  the  sense  of  values  and  the  will-power  so  necessary  to 
the  law-abiding  citizen.  He  has  been  misunderstood;  he  has 
been  credited  with  a  degree  of  responsibility  he  does  not  and 
cannot  possess ;  he  has  been  sent  to  correctional  institutions  time 
after  time  only  to  come  out  unimproved ;  and  he  has  been  left 
free  to  perpetuate  his  irresponsibility,  because  we  have  not 
realized : 

( 1 )  That  the  moron  is  not  a  normal  person  mentally. 

(2)  That  he  can  never  be  made  normal,  and 

(3)  That  feeble-minded  invariably  produce  feeble-minded  un- 
less combined  with  normal  stock. 


FUNDAMENTAL  FACTS  IN  REGARD  TO 
FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS  1 

SEVERAL  important  facts  regarding  mental  defectives  have  been 
clearly  established : 

1.  Feeble-mindedness  is  incurable. 

2.  The  feeble-minded  reproduce  twice  as  rapidly  as  normal 
stock. 

i  Adapted  from  "Fifth   Annual  Report  Virginia   State  Board  of  Chari- 
ties," pp.  11,  12,  Richmond. 


RURAL  HEALTH— MENTAL          205 

3.  Feeble-mindedness'  is   hereditary.     There   has  never  been 
found  a  normal  child  both  of  whose  parents  are  feeble-minded. 

4.  From  25  to  50  per  cent,  of  our  law-breakers  are  feeble- 
minded.    They  are  dominated  by  an  inherited  tendency  to  crime. 
The  percentage  of  commitments  for  major  crimes,  such  as  mur- 
der, arson  and  rape,  is  apparently  twice  as  great  among  mental 
defectives  as  among  normal  people. 

5.  From  feeble-mindedness  springs,  by  inheritance,  insanity, 
epilepsy  and  all  forms  of  neurotic  degeneracy. 

6.  A  very  large  percentage  of  prostitutes  are  feeble-minded. 
In  1911  the  Department  of  Research  of  the  New  Jersey  Training 
School  for  Feeble-minded  tested  fifty-six  delinquent  girls,  "all 
of  whom  had  probably  committed  the  worse  offense  a  young  girl 
can."     Fifty-two  were  found  to  be  mental  defectives.     A  test 
recently  made  of  one  hundred  girls  taken  at  random  from  the 
New  York  Reformatory  for  Women  at  Bedford,  by  the  Bureau 
of   Social   Hygiene,    established   by   John   D.    Rockefeller,    Jr., 
showed  that  all  were  apparently  feeble-minded.     Their  average 
physical  age  was  twenty  years,  nine  and  seven-tenths  months; 
their  average  mental  age,  ten  and  five-tenths  years.     As  shown 
elsewhere  in  this  report,  a  test  of  inmates  of  our  reformatory 
for  delinquent  white  girls  revealed  the  fact  that  thirty  out  of 
thirty-five  were  mental  defectives.     Out  of  300  women  examined 
by  the  Massachusetts  Vice  Commission  only  six  were  found  to 
have  ordinary  intelligence. 

In  view  of  these  facts  it  is  apparent  that  our  great  problems 
of  crime,  insanity  and  the  social  evil  are  inseparably  intertwined 
with  the  problem  of  feeble-mindedness.  Whatever  progress  we 
may  make  in  the  treatment  of  criminals  there  can  be  no  great 
reduction  of  crime  so  long  as  we  ignore  the  fact  of  criminal 
inheritance,  and  whatever  we  may  do  toward  the  segregation 
of  the  insane,  or  toward  the  suppression  of  the  social  evil,  we 
shall  contribute  little  toward  the  actual  solution  of  these  prob- 
lems so  long  as  we  make  no  attempt  to  stem  the  appalling  tide 
of  feeble-minded  offspring  that  is  increasingly  pouring  forth 
from  our  large  and  ever-growing  class  of  mental  defectives.  So 
far  as  modern  investigation  enables  us  to  see,  the  most  pressing 
social  need  of  our  time  is  the  segregation  of  the  feeble-minded. 


206  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


THE  HILL  FOLK1 

FLORENCE  H.   DANIELSON   AND   CHARLES  B.    DAVENPORT 

THE  following  report  is  the  result  of  an  investigation  of  two 
family  trees  in  a  small  Massachusetts  town.  It  aims  to  show 
how  much  crime,  misery  and  expense  may  result  from  the  union 
of  two  defective  individuals — how  a  large  number  of  the  present 
court  frequenters,  paupers  and  town  nuisances  are  connected 
by  a  significant  network  of  relationship.  It  includes  a  discus- 
sion of  the  undesirable  traits  in  the  light  of  the  Mendelian 
analysis.  It  presents  some  observations  concerning  the  relation 
of  heredity  and  environment,  based  on  their  effects  upon  the 
children.  While  it  is  not  an  exhaustive  study  of  all  the  ramifi- 
cations of  even  these  two  families  and  their  consorts,  it  may  be 
sufficient  to  throw  some  light  on  the  vexed  question  of  the  pre- 
vention of  feeble-minded,  degenerate  individuals,  as  a  humane 
and  economical  state  policy. 

The  town  in  question  lies  in  a  fertile  river  valley  among  the 
New  England  hills.  It  is  on  the  direct  railway  line  between 
two  prosperous  cities.  East  and  west  of  it  are  more  hilly, 
less  productive  towns.  Its  present  population  is  about  2,000. 
Most  of  the  people  are  industrious,  intelligent  farmers.  A 
lime  kiln  and  a  marble  quarry  are  the  only  industries  of  im- 
portance. In  summer  the  population  is  nearly  doubled  by  city 
boarders. 

Into  one  corner  of  this  attractive  town  there  came,  about 
1800,  a  shiftless  basket  maker.  He  was  possibly  of  French 
origin,  but  migrated  more  directly  from  the  western  hill  region. 
About  the  same  time  an  Englishman,  also  from  the  western 
hills,  bought  a  small  farm  in  the  least  fertile  part  of  the  town. 
The  progeny  of  these  two  men,  old  Neil  Rasp,2  and  the  Eng- 
lishman, Nuke,  have  sifted  through  the  town  and  beyond  it. 

1  Adapted  from  Excerpts  from  Report  on  a  Rural  Community  of  Heredi- 
tary Defectives.     Eugenics  Record  Office — Memoir  No.  1,  Cold  Spring  Har- 
bor, X.  Y. 

2  The  few  names  which  are  used  in  the  description  of  this  community  are 
fictitious.     The   local   setting  and  the   families   and   all   the   other   details 
actually  exist,  but  for  obvious  reasons  imaginary  names  are  in  every  case 
substituted  for  the  real  ones. 


RURAL  HEALTH— MENTAL  207 

Everywhere  they  have  made  desolate,  alcoholic  homes  which 
have  furnished  State  wards  for  over  fifty  years,  and  have  re- 
quired town  aid  for  a  longer  time.  Enough  of  the  families 
still  live  in  the  original  neighborhood  so  that,  although  they 
occupy  tenant  houses  of  respectable  farmers,  for  they  own  no 
land  now,  the  district  of  the  "Hill"  is  spoken  of  slurringly. 
Where  the  children  have  scattered  to  neighboring  towns,  they 
do  not  remain  long  enough  to  secure  a  residence  and  are  conse- 
quently referred  back  to  the  original  town  when  they  require 
outside  aid.  As  the  younger  generations  have  grown  up,  they 
have,  almost  without  exception,  married  into  American  families 
of  the  same  low  mental  grade,  so  that  the  "Hill"  people  are 
linked  by  their  consorts  to  a  similar  degenerate  family  a  hun- 
dred miles  away. 

The  attitude  of  the  townspeople  is  that  of  exasperated  neigh- 
bors. They  have  lived  beside  these  troublesome  paupers  for  so 
long  that  they  are  too  disgusted  with  them,  and  too  accustomed 
to  the  situation,  to  realize  the  necessity  for  aggressive  work  upon 
it.  A  few  of  them  realize  that  hard  cider  is  a  large  factor  in 
the  cause  of  their  neighbors'  poverty,  but  more  of  them,  appar- 
ently ignoring  the  fact,  keep  it  on  tap  free  or  sell  it.  This  poor 
class  of  people  are  left  largely  to  themselves  until  they  need 
town  aid,  or  some  member  becomes  so  drunk  that  he  disturbs 
the  peace,  or  some  girl  becomes  pregnant  and  has  to  be  taken 
to  an  institution.  About  once  every  eight  or  ten  years,  a  state 
agent  is  informed  of  the  conditions,  and  four  or  five  children 
are  removed  from  the  families.  Then  the  father  and  mother  find 
that  their  financial  problems  are  relieved  for  the  time  and  settle 
down  to  raise  another  family. 

A  few  of  the  men  and  some  of  the  women  have  soldier's  or 
widow's  pensions  and  state  aid,  but  most  of  them  work,  when 
they  do  work,  as  wood  choppers  or  farm  laborers.  Most  of 
their  wages  go  for  hard  cider  or,  if  handed  to  the  wives,  are 
spent  in  other  equally  foolish  ways.  They  move  frequently  from 
one  shanty  or  tumbled  down  house  to  another.  So  long  as  food 
and  a  small  amount  of  clothing  are  furnished  by  some  means, 
they  live  in  bovine  contentment. 

From  the  biological  standpoint,  it  is  interesting  to  note  that 
mental  defect  manifests  itself  in  one  branch  of  the  pedigree  by 


208  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

one  trait  and  in  another  branch  by  quite  a  different  one.  Thus, 
in  one  line  alcoholism  is  universal  among  the  men ;  their  male 
cousins  in  another  line  are  fairly  temperate,  plodding  workers, 
but  the  women  are  immoral.  Another  branch  shows  all  the  men 
to  be  criminal  along  sexual  lines,  while  a  cousin  who  married  into 
a  more  industrious  family  has  descendants  who  are  a  little  more 
respectable.  These  people  have  not  been  subjected  to  the  social 
influences  of  a  city  or  even  of  a  large  town,  so  that  the  traits 
which  they  show  have  been  less  modified  by  a  powerful  social 
environment  than  those  of  urban  dwellers. 

The  conclusion  of  this  brief  survey,  then,  must  be  that  the 
second  and  third  generations  from  a  union  of  mentally  defective 
individuals  show  an  accumulation  and  multiplication  of  bad 
traits,  even  though  a  few  normal  persons  also  appear  from  such 
unions.  It  is  also  evident  that  certain  traits  tend  to  follow 
certain  lines  of  descent,  so  that  after  one  generation,  related 
families  may  each  have  a  different  characteristic  trait.  Feeble- 
mindedness is  due  to  the  absence,  now  of  one  set  of  traits,  now 
of  quite  a  different  set.  Only  when  both  parents  lack  one  or 
more  of  the  same  traits  do  the  children  all  lack  the  traits.  So, 
if  the  traits  lacking  in  both  parents  are  socially  important  the 
children  all  lack  socially  important  traits,  i.e.,  are  feeble-minded. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  two  parents  lack  different  socially 
significant  traits,  so  that  each  parent  brings  into  the  combination 
the  traits  that  the  other  lacks,  all  of  the  children  may  be  with- 
out serious  lack  and  all  pass  for  "normal."  However,  inasmuch 
as  many  of  the  traits  of  such  "normals"  are  derived  from  one 
side  of  the  house  only  (are  simplex),  that  may,  on  mating  per- 
sons of  like  origin  with  themselves,  produce  obviously  defective 
offspring. 

The  large  majority  of  the  matings  which  are  represented  in 
this  report  are  of  defectives  with  defectives.  A  few  of  those 
who  have  drifted  into  a  different  part  of  the  country  have  mar- 
ried persons  of  a  higher  degree  of  intelligence,  but  the  most  of 
such  wanderers  have,  even  in  a  new  location,  found  mates  who 
were  about  their  equal  in  intelligence  and  ambition. 

In  a  rural  district  which  supports  such  a  class  of  semi-paupers 
as  has  been  described  the  social  advantages  which  come  to  them 
are  meager  and  narrow.  After  a  long  day's  work  on  the  farm 


RURAL  HEALTH— MENTAL  209 

or  in  the  kitchen,  the  farm  laborer  and  kitchen  girl  find  their 
recreation  in  an  evening  of  gossip,  for  they  know  every  one  in 
the  neighborhood.  They  may  live  near  enough  to  their  homes 
to  go  there  at  night.  If  such  is  the  case,  one  dirty  kitchen  may 
hold  half  a  dozen  men  and  the  women  of  the  house.  They 
smoke  and  drink  cider  and  pass  rude  jests  together  and  in  the 
end  sometimes  fight.  Away  from  home,  they  are  ostracized  by 
the  other  social  classes.  They  occasionally  have  a  dance  which 
will  bring  together  many  of  the  same  class  from  neighboring 
towns. 

Under  these  circumstances  it  is  not  surprising  that  early 
marriages  are  the  rule.  After  the  legal  age  is  passed,  school 
work  is  dropped  and,  for  a  girl,  the  servant's  life  often  begins, 
unless  she  is  married  at  once.  At  any  rate  she  anticipates  mar- 
riage and  works  with  that  as  a  goal,  not  to  escape  work,  but  to 
gain  a  certain  independence  and  that  end  of  all  effort,  "to  be 
married."  Nor  is  it  surprising  that  cousin  marriages  are  fre- 
quent. In  fact,  even  where  no  known  relationship  exists  be- 
tween the  contracting  parties,  it  is  probable  that  they  are  from 
the  same  strains.  The  early  marriage  is  usually  followed  by  a 
large  family  of  children.  Some  die  in  infancy  in  nearly  every 
home,  but  most  of  them  survive  a  trying  babyhood  and  develop 
fairly  robust  pl^sical  constitutions.  They  are  born  into  the 
same  narrow  circle  that  their  parents  were,  and  unless  some 
powerful  factor  changes  the  routine,  they  are  apt  to  follow  the 
same  path  until  past  middle  age.  For,  except  where  tuberculosis 
has  ravaged,  disease  has  spared  these  people.  So  it  is  that  the 
meager  social  life,  the  customs  of  their  parents,  the  natural  ostra- 
cism of  the  higher  classes,  and  the  individual's  preference  for  a 
congenial  mate  induce  endogamy,  or  in-marriage,  among  the 
mentally  deficient. 

It  has  been  maintained  that  the  dispersion  of  such  communi- 
ties of  feeble-minded  persons  would  stimulate  out-marriage  and 
that  this  would  increase  the  chance  of  marriage  with  different 
and  perhaps  better  blood  and  thus  diminish  the  frequency  of  ap- 
pearance of  defects  in  the  next  generation.  The  instances  of  two 
daughters  who  married  comparatively  normal  men  supports 
this  view.  Their  progeny  are,  as  a  whole,  a  better  class  of  citi- 
zens than  the  progeny  of  their  sisters  who  mated  with  feeble- 


210  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

minded  men.  Nevertheless,  the  50  per  cent,  of  the  offspring 
who  were  feeble-minded  or  criminal,  even  in  these  cases,  consti- 
tute a  menace  which  should  be  considered.  Another  case  was 
from  a  criminal,  alcoholic  family  and  possessed  both  of  these 
traits.  He  migrated  to  another  state  and  married  a  woman 
who  had  more  intelligence  than  either  of  the  normal  husbands 
(before  mentioned).  Only  one  of  their  children  shows  the  crim- 
inal tendencies  of  the  father,  though  the  two  youngest  are  neu- 
rotic, and  backward  in  school.  After  the  mother  found  out  the 
real  character  of  her  husband  and  his  family,  she  left  him. 
While  such  repression  of  defective  traits  in  the  progeny  by  mar- 
riage into  normal  strains  is  beneficial  to  the  community,  it  in- 
volves a  great  sacrifice  on  the  part  of  the  normal  consort.  How- 
ever, the  consort  is  only  one ;  the  progeny  many.  The  more  fre- 
quent result  of  the  migration  of  a  feeble-minded  individual  is 
his  marriage  into  another  defective  strain  in  a  different  part  of 
the  country.  The  change  in  locality  usually  means  that  two 
different  kinds  of  feeble-mindedness  are  united  instead  of  two 
similar  types. 

Looking  at  the  relation  of  the  Hill  families  to  society  on  the 
financial  side,  we  see  the  three  chief  ways  in  which  they  have 
been  an  expense  to  the  public  are  through  town  relief,  court 
and  prison  charges,  and  their  maintenance  as  the  State  wards. 
The  town  of  about  2,000  inhabitants  in  which  the  original  an- 
cestors settled  has  had  to  bear  most  the  burden  of  the  petty  bills 
for  relief.  The  poor  records  of  this  one  town  have  been  used  to 
get  an  estimate  of  the  cost  of  these  families  to  the  town,  and  these 
records  run  back  only  to  war  time.  From  1863-64  to  the  present 
time,  some  families  of  the  Hill  have  had  partial  or  entire  public 
support.  In  the  first  decade  9.3  per  cent,  of  the  town 's  bill  for 
paupers  was  paid  for  the  Hill  families.  In  the  second  decade, 
29.1  per  cent  of  the  total  bill  was  paid  for  the  same  families  or 
their  descendants.  During  the  thirty  years  covered  by  these  de- 
cades, the  total  aid  given  to  paupers  increased  69.4  per  cent.,  but 
that  given  to  the  Hill  families  increased  430  per  cent.  It  is 
probable  that  more  than  9.3  per  cent,  of  the  $15,964  expended 
from  1879-89  went  to  these  people,  for  in  some  instances  the 
names  of  those  aided  were  not  recorded.  Besides  the  usual  bills 
for  rent,  provisions,  fuel,  and  medical  attendance,  the  last  decade 


RURAL  HEALTH— MENTAL          211 

contains  the  item  of  partial  support  of  three  children  in  the 
State  School  for  Feeble-minded.  The  births,  minus  the  deaths, 
during  this  same  period  caused  an  increase  of  about  59  per  cent, 
in  the  number  of  individuals  connected  with  the  Hill  families. 
This  means,  then,  that  for  59  per  cent,  increase  in  numbers, 
their  expense  to  the  public  has  increased  430  per  cent. 

Turning  to  the  court  and  prison  records  for  the  last  thirty 
years,  we  find  that  at  least  sixteen  persons  from  the  Hill  fam- 
ilies have  been  sentenced  to  prison  for  serious  crimes  during  that 
time.  A  majority  of  these  crimes  were  against  sex,  and  the 
sentences  varied  from  ten  years  to  two  months,  or  were  inde- 
terminate. The  cost  of  these  sixteen  persons  to  the  county  and 
State  through  the  courts  and  institutions  has  been  at  least  $10,- 
763.43.  The  arrests  for  drunkenness  and  disorder  have  not  been 
included.  They  are  very  frequent  and  the  cases  are  usually 
disposed  of  by  a  fine  or  thirty  days'  imprisonment.  About  a 
third  of  the  business  of  the  district  court  comes  from  these 
families. 

The  third  large  item  of  expense  which  falls  upon  the  public, 
through  the  State  treasury,  is  the  maintenance  of  the  wards 
which  have  been  taken  from  their  homes. 

Of  the  thirty-five,  twenty-one  are  still  under  the  control  of 
the  State  as  institutional  cases  or  because  they  are  under  twenty- 
one  years.  The  expenses  of  commitment,  board,  clothing,  school 
tuition  and  officers'  salaries  is  difficult  to  compute,  but  as  ac- 
curately as  can  be  estimated,  these  children,  during  the  last 
twenty-three  years,  have  cost  the  State  $45,888.57.  This  means 
that  for  nine  families  about  $2,000  each  year  has  been  expended 
to  maintain  children  whose  parents  were  unfit  to  care  for  them. 

The  financial  burden,  then,  which  the  Hill  people  entail  is 
constantly  increasing,  and  that  far  beyond  the  proportion  of 
their  increase  in  numbers.  This  burden  rests  especially  upon 
the  town  in  which  they  live.  The  400  per  cent,  increase  in  the 
finacial  aid  which  they  have  required  in  the  last  decade  pre- 
sents this  fact  in  a  startling  manner.  The  large  percentage  of 
the  crimes  which  were  against  sex  indicate  that  the  influence 
which  such  persons  exert  in  a  community  is  of  far  more  im- 
portance than  the  10,700  odd  dollars  spent  in  punishing  the 
criminals  after  the  influence  has  been  established.  The  money 


212  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

expended  on  the  State  wards  is  well  spent  where  even  half  of 
them  are  trained  for  useful  citizenship,  but  the  imposition  upon 
society  of  an  equal  number  of  undesirable  citizens  calls  for  a 
policy  of  prevention  which  will  work  hand  in  hand  with  the 
present  one  of  partial  alleviation. 

Most  of  the  previous  discussion  has  been  in  regard  to  the  first 
four  generations, — those  individuals  who  are  old  enough  to  have 
their  traits  fully  developed  and  their  habits  firmly  established. 
There  is,  however,  a  comparatively  large  number  of  children 
between  the  ages  of  six  and  sixteen  years  who  are  growing  up 
to  form  the  fifth  generation  of  the  Hill  people.  A  brief  study 
of  the  school  record  of  seventy-five  of  these  children  may  give 
one  an  idea  of  the  prospect  for  the  next  generation. 

The  school  record  of  seven  of  them  is  not  known.  The  others 
have  been  divided  into  two  classes,  those  who  are  up  to  grade 
and  those  who  are  below  the  grade  they  should  be  in.  Brief 
descriptions  of  the  mental  traits  which  they  have  exhibited  in 
school  serve  as  an  index  of  the  characteristics  which  are  develop- 
ing. Glancing  down  the  list  of  thirty-eight  children  who  are 
below  grade,  two  causes  for  their  backwardness  stand  out  most 
prominently.  Either  they  are  unable  to  fix  their  attention  upon 
one  thing  long  enough  to  grasp  it,  or  else  they  require  so  much 
more  time  to  comprehend  ideas  upon  which  they  have  concen- 
trated, that  they  progress  only  half  as  fast  as  the  average  child. 
They  are  frequently  irregular  in  attendance  so  that  they  even 
lose  the  stimulus  of  regular  systematic  work.  All  of  these  chil- 
dren attend  rural  schools  where  no  special  provision  is  made  for 
the  backward  child.  Because  the  schools  are  so  small,  this  class 
of  children  not  only  constitute  a  drain  upon  the  teacher's  time 
and  resources,  but  retard  the  progress  of  the  entire  class  in 
which  they  are  studying.  Occasionally  they  develop  mischievous 
qualities,  but  usually  they  are  quiet,  stupid  laggards.  They  will 
leave  school  as  soon  as  the  law  will  allow  and  go  to  form  the 
lower  strata  in  the  industrial  world  as  they  have  in  the  aca- 
demic. Five  of  these  thirty-eight  have  one  parent  who  is  ap- 
proximately normal. 

Thirty  children  from  similar  families  have  kept  up  to  their 
grade.  Most  of  them  do  as  well  as  children  of  ordinary  parent- 
age, though  only  eleven  of  them  have  one  or  both  parents  whc 


RURAL  HEALTH— MENTAL  213 

are  not  feeble-minded.     A  few  of  them  are  the  slow  ones  in  their 
classes. 

This  brief  survey,  then,  indicates  that  before  adolescence  half 
of  the  children  from  the  Hill  families  show  evidences  of  their 
mental  handicap.  The  detrimental  influence  which  such  chil- 
dren may  exert  upon  the  rural  schools  which  they  attend  is  an 
important  matter  for  consideration.  How  many  of  the  other 
half,  who  have  held  their  own  with  children  of  average  par- 
entage, up  to  adolescence,  will  be  able  to  keep  up  to  the  same 
standard  from  sixteen  to  twenty-five  is  an  open  question.  Its 
solution  depends  largely  upon  the  comparative  weight  of  heredi- 
tary and  environmental  influences  during  that  period. 


THE  EXTENT  OF  FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS  IN  RURAL 
AND  URBAN  COMMUNITIES  IN  NEW  HAMPSHIRE  x 

ONE  of  the  most  significant  studies  that  can  be  made  in  the 
survey  of  these  counties  is  the  geographic  distribution  of  the 
feeble-minded  and  the  proportion  of  the  entire  state  population 
that  falls  within  this  defective  class.  Since  there  has  been  a 
report  from  every  town  in  the  State,  either  by  questionnaire  or 
personal  canvass,  this  proportion  may  be  considered  fairly  cor- 
rect even  though  many  cases  have  not  been  reported. 

One  of  the  most  significant  revelations  of  this  table  is  the 
range  of  feeble-mindedness  gradually  ascending  from  the  small- 
est percentage,  in  the  most  populous  county  of  the  State,  to  the 
largest  percentages,  in  the  two  most  remote  and  thinly  populated 
counties.  It  speaks  volumes  for  the  need  of  improving  rural 
conditions,  of  bringing  the  people  in  the  remote  farm  and  hill 
districts  into  closer  touch  with  the  currents  of  healthy,  active 
life  in  the  great  centers.  It  shows  that  a  campaign  should  begin 
at  once, — this  very  month, — for  the  improvement  of  rural  living 
conditions,  and  especially  for  the  improvement  of  the  rural 
schools,  so  that  the  children  now  growing  up  may  receive  the 
education  that  is  their  birthright.  Let  us  have  compulsory  super- 
vision of  schools  all  over  the  State,  as  well  as  compulsory  school 
attendance. 

i  Adapted  from  Report  of  the  Children's  Commission,  Concord,  N.  H. 


214  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  feeble-minded  population  of  the  State  does  not  appear 
to  be  a  shifting  one.  Of  the  8.9  per  cent,  of  cases  born  in  New 
Hampshire,  but  outside  the  town  of  present  residence,  the  ma- 
jority were  born  within  the  county  as  well,  often  in  an  adjacent 
town,  and  the  majority  of  those  born  in  the  United  States,  but 
outside  of  New  Hampshire,  were  born  in  one  of  the  other  New 
England  states. 

FEEBLE-MINDED  CITIZENS  IN  PENNSYLVANIA  * 

DR.    WILHELMINE   E.    KEY 

DR.  KEY'S  report  is  based  upon  a  four  months'  intensive  study 
of  a  rural  community  in  northeastern  Pennsylvania,  containing 
about  700  square  miles  and  a  population  of  16,000. 

The  purpose  of  the  study  was  to  determine  the  number  of  men- 
tally defective  persons  in  this  community,  and  their  cost  to  the 
people  of  Pennsylvania,  as  well  as  to  discover  possible  remedies 
for  a  condition  that  experts  agree  becomes  rapidly  worse  wher- 
ever left  unchecked. 

Dr.  Key  found  in  this  district  508  persons,  ranging  in  age  from 
six  years  upward,  who  were  feeble-minded — that  is,  who  were 
either  clearly  mentally  defective,  or  who,  being  members  of  the 
family  of  such  a  defective,  have  been  so  affected  by  their  associa- 
tions and  environment  as  to  be  indistinguishable  from  mental 
defectives  in  their  conduct  and  social  and  family  relations. 

In  other  words,  more  than  three  defectives  not  in  institutions 
were  found  for  every  100  of  the  population  of  this  Pennsylvania 
community.  This  enumeration  did  not  include  a  considerable 
number  of  shiftless,  indolent,  inefficient  persons,  who  had  no  clear 
mental  or  physical  defect,  but  who,  in  a  stricter  classification, 
might  be  classed  with  the  defectives,  so  far  as  their  effect  upon  the 
community  is  concerned.  Nor  did  it  include  children  under  six, 
unless  they  were  obviously  and  unmistakably  defective. 

A  careful  house-to-house  study,  oft-repeated,  verified  and  am- 
plified by  examination  of  official  records  and  family  histories  and 
by  consultation  with  well-informed  neighbors  and  social  workers, 
developed  several  striking  conclusions: 

i  Adapted  from  Report  of  The  Public  Charities  Association  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, pp.  8-9;  36-46;  61-62.  Publication  No.  16.  Phila.,  1915. 


RURAL  HEALTH— MENTAL          215 

(1)  Certain  centers  of  mental  and  moral  degeneracy  and  defect 
were  found,  which  corresponded  closely  with  the  distribution  of 
certain  well-known  mentally  tainted  family  stocks.     In  two  little 
settlements,  for  instance,  on  the  edge  of  the  area  studied,  it  was 
found  that  57.7  per  cent,  and  26.6  per  cent,  of  the  population 
were  mentally  defective,  in  the  sense  above  indicated.     Examina- 
tion revealed  the  fact  that  these  settlements  were  the  original 
seats  of  two  families  that  were  notably  defective.     By  inbreeding 
and  inter-breeding,  the  original  small  groups,  after  several  gen- 
erations had  brought  forth  hundreds  of  their  own  kind,  and  other 
hundreds  who  were  on  the  borderline  of  inefficiency  and  mental 
defectiveness. 

Not  only  by  drawing  together  representatives  of  their  own 
and  other  bad  strains,  but  by  attracting  weak  members  of  better 
and  normal  families,  these  settlements  became  centers  of  con- 
stantly widening  and  contaminating  influence,  the  more  aggres- 
sive members  going  out  to  found  other  centers  of  contamination. 

(2)  From  figures  supplied  by  the  officers  of  the  county  most 
directly  concerned,  Dr.  Key  shows  that  the  actual  financial  cost 
to  the  county,  for  caring  for  and  protecting  against  these  defec- 
tive groups  during  the  last  twenty-five  years,  has  been  at  least 
$265,000,  of  which  $125,000  was  actually  spent  for  maintenance 
of  representatives  of  these  families  in  the  county  home  for  vary- 
ing periods ;  $30,000  for  care  of  orphans ;  $75,000  for  settlement 
of  criminal  cases  outside  of  court ;  $15,000  for  settlement  of  crim- 
inal  cases  in  court,   and  $20,000  for  outdoor  or  home  relief. 
This  takes  no  account  of  the  cost  of  their  private  depredations, 
nor  of  private  charity,  nor  free  medical  attendance,  nor  neces- 
sary extra  police  service,  nor  drink  bill,  etc. 

In  this  connection  Dr.  Key  says: 

"Could  this  sum  have  been  applied  to  the  segregation  of  its 
feeble-minded  women,  it  would  have  sufficed  to  rid  the  county  of 
the  whole  of  its  younger  generation  of  undesirables.  We  must 
bear  in  mind,  however,  that  at  present  the  State  has  no  institu- 
tion for  the  care  of  such  women  .  .  .  The  training-schools  for  the 
feeble-minded  are  overcrowded  and  have  long  waiting  lists  .  .  . 
Our  short-sighted  policy  .  .  .  has  not  even  the  merit  of  being 
inexpensive.  It  costs  a  great  deal  of  money  and  then  serves  only 
to  aggravate  the  evils  which  it  is  designed  to  cure.  .  .  .  The 


216  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

county  has  done  the  best  it  could  with  the  means  at  hand. 
Surely  it  is  high  time  that  the  State  inaugurate  a  more  intelli- 
gent and  far-reaching  policy  which  shall  forever  rid  these  sections 
of  their  unequal  and  undeserved  burden." 

(3)  There  is  a  very  distinct  tendency  for  mental  defect  to  run 
in  certain  families,  indicating  the  strong  hereditary  influence, 
which  can  only  be  checked  by  steps  to  prevent  marriage  and 
continued  propagation  of  the  kind. 

(4)  Comparisons    between    groups    of    forty-five    defective 
women,  and  forty-five  normal  women  in  the  same  area,  showed 
that  the  average  birth-rate  for  defectives  was  seven  children  to 
each  mother,  while  that  of  the  normal  women  was  two  and  nine- 
tenths  children  for  each  mother.     This  excess  of  defective  births 
was  not  offset  by  higher  mortality  rate  among  defectives,  the 
actual  survivals  of  children  of  defective  mothers  being  twice  as 
great  as  in  normal  families. 

While  it  is  recognized  that  this  narrow  inquiry,  covering  so  few 
cases,  is  not  to  be  accepted  as  conclusive,  it  seems  clear  that  in 
this  particular  area,  the  tendency  to  multiplication  is  consider- 
ably greater  among  defectives  than  among  normals,  thus  intensi- 
fying and  emphasizing  the  problem  of  caring  for  and  preventing 
the  unlimited  propagation  of  mentally  tainted  children.  . 

(5)  Centers  of  defectiveness  have  flourished  where  remedial 
agencies  have  been  most  active  for  relief  of  external  conditions. 
The  lightening  of  the  struggle  for  existence  which  this  relief 
brings  only  makes  it  easier  for  the  defective  to  live  on,  procreate 
and  multiply  his  kind.     The  root  of  the  evil  lies  not  primarily 
in  external  conditions,  but  in  the  failure  to  separate  and  restrain 
inherently  defective  individuals  from  propagation. 

An  interesting  sidelight  on  the  situation  is  contained  in  Dr. 
Key's  study  of  the  rural  school,  in  relation  to  the  defective. 
This  disclosed  160  pupils  whose  inability  to  advance  could  be  laid 
primarily  to  hereditary  defect.  The  detailed  histories  of  fifty 
such  children  are  given  in  the  report.  An  instance  is  cited, 
where,  of  forty  children  in  a  certain  school,  ten  were  defective,  or 
retarded  in  their  revelopment  from  two  to  four  years.  The  ef- 
fect of  these  children  upon  the  normal  children,  and  the  waste 
effort  expended  by  and  for  the  defectives  is  one  of  the  sound 
arguments  for  wider  State  supervision  and  care  of  defectives. 


RURAL  HEALTH— MENTAL 


217 


In  conclusion,  Dr.  Key  remarks : 

"No  sensible  person  to-day  questions  the  State's  authority  to 
cleanse  a  polluted  water  supply  or  take  any  measures  deemed 
necessary  to  stop  the  spread  of  disease.  .  .  .  Why  should  it  not 
exercise  the  same  jurisdiction  with  regard  to  these  plague  spots, 
the  sources  of  moral  contagion?" 

She  strongly  urges  the  need  of  locating  the  worst  centers  of 
degeneracy  and  defect;  registration  of  notoriously  bad  strains; 
marriage  laws  to  restrain  marriage  into  these  strains;  establish- 
ment of  adequate  institutions  immediately,  for  the  custodial  care 
of  those  whose  continued  multiplication  cannot  be  prevented  by 
these  means. 

AMENTIA  IN  RURAL  ENGLAND  1 

A.    W.    TREDGOLD 

SHOWING  THE  TOTAL  NUMBER  OF  AMKNTS,  AND  IDIOTS,  IMBECILES,  AND 
FEEBLE-MINDED,  RESPECTIVELY,  PER  1,000  POPULATION,  IN  CERTAIN  DISTRICTS 
OF  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM,  ACCORDING  TO  THE  INVESTIGATION  OF  THE  ROYAL 
COMMISSION,  1904. 


Feeble-minded 

DO 

03 

m 
9 

1 

a 

, 

g" 

"o 

'o 

GO 

1 

3 

JU 

2 

" 

h-  1 

s 

rrf 

'S 

h-H 

*^ 

1 

H 

Manchester    .... 

0.05 

0.32 

1.20 

2.10 

3.74 

Birmingham    .  .  . 

0.09 

0.27 

1.70 

1.60 

3.76 

Hull    

0.02 

0.20 

0.55 

0.58 

1.35 

Urban 

Glasgow     

0.07 

0.23 

0.32 

1.00 

1.68 

Dublin    

0.19 

0.57 

1.20 

2.10 

4.14 

Belfast  

0.13 

0.63 

0.70 

0.97 

2.45 

fStoke-on-Trent.. 

0.21 

0.45 

2.10 

1.10 

3.96 

Industrial                 ~\  Durham   

0.02 

0.34 

0.56 

0.56 

1.48 

[Cork   

0.07 

0.32 

0.16 

0.54 

1.10 

Mixed  Industrial     ["Nottinghamshire 

0.30 

0.66 

1.50 

1.20 

3.81 

and  Agricultural    "^Carmarthenshire 

0.59 

0.65 

0.51 

1.20 

3.05 

rSomersetshire  .  . 

0.18 

1.00 

2.10 

1.10 

4.54 

Wiltshire     

0.35 

0.69 

2.20 

0.90 

4.25 

Agricultural 

Lincolnshire    .  .  . 

0.44 

0.98 

1.40 

1.70 

4.68 

Carnarvonshire. 

0.24 

0.58 

2.10 

0.94 

3.96 

Galvvay    

0.13 

1.00 

1.00 

2.20 

4.49 

Adanted  from  "Mental  DpfirioTu-v  "  n.  12.  Wood.  M.  Y..  190S. 


218  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


URBAN  AND  RURAL  INSANITY  * 

IN  general  the  statistics  indicate  that  there  is  relatively  more 
insanity  in  cities  than  in  country  districts  and  in  large  cities 
than  in  small  cities,  although  to  some  extent  the  difference  may 
be  accounted  for  by  difference  between  city  and  country  as  re- 
gards the  tendency  to  place  cases  of  insanity  under  institutional 
care.  The  figures  may  also  be  affected  in  some  degree  by  the 
accident  of  the  location  of  the  hospitals  for  the  insane.  Studies 
made  in  New  York  State  show  that  the  proportion  of  admissions 
from  a  county  in  which  a  hospital  is  located  is  always  greater 
than  from  other  counties  and  that  the  proportion  decreases  with 
the  distance  from  the  hospital.  The  influence  of  this  factor 
upon  the  comparison  between  city  and  country,  however,  would 
not  everywhere  be  uniform.  Whether  it  tended  to  increase  the 
ratio  of  admissions  from  country  districts  or  that  from  city  dis- 
tricts would  depend  entirely  upon  the  location  of  the  hospitals. 
Probably  it  does  not  go  very  far  toward  explaining  the  higher 
ratio  of  admissions  from  the  urban  population. 

The  ratio  of  admission  to  hospitals  for  the  insane  is  higher 
for  urban  than  for  rural  communities  for  both  males  and  fe- 
males, and  the  difference  is  about  as  marked  for  one  sex  as  for 
the  other.  It  follows  that  the  difference  between  the  sexes  with 
regard  to  this  ratio  is  about  as  marked  in  urban  communities 
as  it  is  in  rural,  the  one  statement  being  a  corollary  of  the  other. 

One  difficulty,  however,  about  all  comparisons  of  this  kind  as 
applied  to  the  United  States  as  a  whole  is  that  the  urban  popula- 
tion and  the  rural  are  very  differently  distributed  over  the  ter- 
ritory of  the  United  States.  New  England  and  the  Middle  At- 
lantic divisions  together  include  45  per  cent,  of  the  total  urban 
population  of  the  United  States,  as  compared  with  only  13.5  per 
cent,  of  the  rural  population.  If  to  these  two  divisions  is  added 
the  East  North  Central  the  combined  area  includes  67.6  per  cent., 
or  about  two-thirds,  of  the  urban  population,  but  only  31  per 
cent.,  or  less  than  one-third,  of  the  rural  population.  The  three 
southern  divisions,  on  the  other  hand,  contain  a  much  smaller 

i  Adapted  from  "Insane  and  Feeble-minded  in  Institutions,  1910." 
Dept.  of  Commerce,  U.  S.  Bur.  of  Census,  pp.  49-51.  Published  1914. 


RURAL  HEALTH— MENTAL  219 

proportion  of  the  urban  population  than  of  the  rural — 15.5  per 
cent,  of  the  one  as  compared  with  46.1  per  cent,  of  the  other. 
The  characteristics  of  the  rural  population  of  the  United  States, 
therefore,  are  affected  to  a  large  degree  by  conditions  peculiar 
to  the  South,  while  those  of  the  urban  population  largely  reflect 
conditions  in  the  North  and  East ;  and,  in  general,  any  com- 
parison between  urban  and  rural  population  is  to  a  considerable 
extent  a  comparison  between  the  North  and  East  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  South  and  West  on  the  other. 


WHAT  IS  PRACTICABLE  IN  THE  WAY  OF 
PREVENTION  OF  MENTAL  DEFECT  x 

WALTER   E.    FEENALD 

DURING  the  last  decade  four  factors  have  materially  changed 
the  professional  and  popular  conception  of  the  problem  of  the 
feeble-minded. 

1.  The  widespread  use  of  mental  tests  has  greatly  simplified 
the  preliminary  recognition  of  ordinary  cases  of  mental  defect 
and  done  much  to  popularize  the  knowledge  of  the  extent  and 
importance  of  feeble-mindedness. 

2.  The  intensive  studies  of  the  family  histories  of  large  num- 
bers of  the  feeble-minded  by  Goddard,  Davenport   and  Tred- 
gold  have  demonstrated  what  had  hitherto  only  been  suspected, 
that  the  great  majority  of  these  persons  are  feeble-minded  be- 
cause they  come  from  family  stocks  which  transmit  feeble-mind- 
edness from  generation  to  generation  in  accordance  with  the 
laws  of  heredity.     Many  of  the  members  of  these  families  are 
not  defective  themselves,  but  these  normal  members  of  tainted 
families  are  liable  to  have  a  certain  number  of  defectives  among 
their  own  descendants.     The  number  of  persons  who  are  feeble- 
minded as  a  result  of  injury,  disease  or  other  environmental  con- 
ditions without  hereditary  predisposition  is  much  smaller  than 
had  been  suspected,  and  these  accidental  cases  do  not  transmit 
their  defect  to  their  progeny. 

i  Read  before  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction,  Balti- 
more, 1915,  being  the  report  of  the  Conference  Committee  on  State  Care 
of  the  Insane,  Feeble-minded  and  Epileptic.  Reprinted  from  the  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  Conference. 


220  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

3.  The  cumulative  evidence  furnished  by  surveys,  community 
studies,  and  intensive  group  inquiries  has  now  definitely  proved 
that  feeble-mindedness  is  an  important   factor  as   a   cause  of 
juvenile  vice  and  delinquency,  adult  crime,  sex  immorality,  the 
spread  of  venereal  disease,  prostitution,  illegitimacy,  vagrancy, 
pauperism,  and  other  forms  of  social  evil  and  social  disease. 

4.  Our  estimates  of  the  extent  and  the  prevalence  of  feeble- 
mindedness have  been  greatly  increased  by  the  application  of 
mental  tests,  the  public  school  classes  for  defectives,  the  inter- 
pretation   of   the    above    mentioned   anti-social    expressions    of 
feeble-mindedness,  and  the  intensive  community  studies. 

It  is  becoming  evident  that  some  central  governmental  author- 
ity should  be  made  responsible  for  the  supervision,  assistance  and 
control  of  the  feeble-minded  at  large  in  the  community  who  are 
not  properly  cared  for  by  their  friends.  This  proposal  is  not  so 
revolutionary  as  it  seems,  for  a  large  proportion  of  feeble- 
minded people  at  some  time  in  their  lives  now  come  under  the 
jurisdiction  of  public  authorities  or  private  societies  as  de- 
pendents or  as  irresponsible  law-breakers.  Many  feeble-minded 
persons  eventually  become  permanent  public  charges.  Many 
run  the  gauntlet  of  the  police,  the  courts,  the  penal  institutions, 
the  almshouses,  the  tramp  shelters,  the.  lying-in  hospitals,  and 
often  many  private  societies  and  agencies,  perhaps,  eventually 
to  turn  up  in  the  institutions  for  the  feeble-minded.  At  any 
given  time,  it  is  a  matter  of  chance  as  to  what  state  or  local  or 
private  organization  or  institution  is  being  perplexed  by  the 
problems  they  present.  They  are  shifted  from  one  organization 
or  institution  to  another  as  soon  as  possible.  At  present  there 
is  no  bureau  or  officer  with  the  knowledge  and  the  authority 
to  advise  and  compel  proper  care  and  protection  for  this  numer- 
ous and  dangerous  class. 

This  state  supervision  of  the  feeble-minded  might  be  done 
successfully  by  some  existing  organization  like  a  properly  con- 
stituted state  board  of  health,  or  state  board  of  charities,  or  by  a 
special  board  or  official;  but  the  responsible  official  should  be  a 
physician  trained  in  psychiatry,  with  especial  knowledge  of  all 
phases  of  mental  deficiency  and  its  many  social  expressions. 
The  local  administration  of  this  plan  could  be  carried  out  by 
the  use  of  existing  local  health  boards,  or  other  especially  quali- 


RURAL  HEALTH— MENTAL  221 

fied  local  officials  or,  perhaps  better,  by  the  utilization  of  properly 
qualified  volunteer  social  workers,  or  existing  local  private  or- 
ganizations and  societies,  already  dealing  with  dependents  or 
delinquents.  This  systematic  supervision  and  control,  could  eas- 
ily be  made  to  cover  an  entire  State,  and  would  obviate  the 
present  needless,  costly  and  futile  reduplication  of  effort. 

The  most  immediately  practical  method  of  prevention  is  that 
of  intelligent  segregation.  The  average  family  is  entirely  free 
from  mental  defect.  It  is  possible  that  a  real  eugenic  survey  of 
a  given  locality  might  show  that  90  per  cent,  of  the  feeble- 
mindedness in  that  locality  was  contributed  by  5  per  cent,  of 
the  families  in  that  community.  The  proposed  governmental 
supervision  of  the  feeble-minded,  with  its  sequence  of  registra- 
tion, extra-institutional  visitation,  accumulation  of  personal  and 
family  histories,  cooperation  with  private  organizations,  public 
school  classes  for  defectives,  and  mental  clinics,  would  soon  indi- 
cate the  individuals  most  likely  to  breed  other  defectives.  The 
families  with  strong  potentiality  of  defect  would  be  recognized 
and  located.  We  know  that  if  both  parents  are  hereditarily 
feeble-minded,  all  the  children  will  be  defective,  and  that  if  one 
parent  is  feeble-minded,  on  an  average  half  of  the  children  will 
be  defective.  Families  and  settlements  of  the  Kallikak,  Nam  or 
Hill-folk  class,  the  so-called  hovel  type,  can  be  broken  up  and 
terminated  by  segregation  of  the  members  of  the  child-bearing 
age.  Every  feeble-minded  girl  or  woman  of  the  hereditary  type, 
especially  of  the  moron  class,  not  adequately  protected,,  should 
be  segregated  during  the  reproductive  period.  Otherwise  she 
is  almost  certain  to  bear  defective  children,  who,  in  turn,  breed 
other  defectives.  The  male  defectives  are  probably  less  likely 
to  become  parents,  but  many  male  morons  also  should  be  segre- 
gated. This  segregation  carried  out  thoroughly  for  even  one 
generation  would  largely  reduce  the  number  of  the  feeble- 
minded. 

The  cost  of  segregation  will  be  large,  but  not  so  large  as  the 
present  cost  of  caring  for  these  same  persons,  to  say  nothing  of 
their  progeny  in  future  generations.  These  people  are  seldom 
self-supporting  and  most  of  them  are  eventually  supported  by 
the  public  in  some  way.  From  the  economic  standpoint,  alone, 
no  other  investment  could  be  so  profitable.  The  present  genera- 


222  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tion  is  the  trustee  for  the  inherent  quality  as  well  as  for  the 
material  welfare  of  future  generations.  In  a  few  years  the  ex- 
pense of  institutions  and  farm  colonies  for  the  feeble-minded 
will  be  counterbalanced  by  the  reduction  in  the  population  of 
almshouses,  prisons  and  other  expensive  institutions.  When  the 
feeble-minded  are  recognized  in  childhood  and  trained  properly, 
many  of  them  are  capable  of  being  supported  at  low  cost  under 
institution  supervision. 

The  State  will  never  be  called  upon  to  place  all  the  feeble- 
minded in  institutions.  Many  cases  will  never  need  segregation 
— small  children  of  both  sexes,  cases  properly  cared  for  at  home 
with  or  without  supervision,  many  adult  males  and  adult  fe- 
males past  the  child-bearing  period.  Eugenic  study  will  recog- 
nize the  non-hereditary  cases  who  cannot  transmit  their  defect, 
and  who  do  not  need  segregation  for  this  reason.  The  one  great 
obstacle  to  effective  prevention  of  f eeble-mindedness  is  the  lack  of 
definite,  precise  knowledge.  This  knowledge  can  only  be  sup- 
plied by  long-continued  scientific  research  along  many  lines  of 
inquiry.  We  do  not  even  know  the  exact  number  of  the  feeble- 
minded. This  fact  will  be  supplied  by  the  future  community 
surveys  and  other  extensive  and  intensive  studies. 

And,  after  all,  the  meaning  of  this  report  is  that  in  the  long 
run  education  in  the  broadest  sense  will  be  the  most  effective 
method  in  a  rational  movement  for  the  diminution  of  feeble- 
mindedness. One  of  the  principal  advantages  of  the  proposed 
plan  for  state  registration  and  supervision  of  the  feeble-minded 
is  the  opportunity  it  gives  for  the  general  education  of  the  people 
of  the  State  upon  this  subject.  The  public  generally  should  be 
persistently  informed  as  to  its  extent,  causes  and  results  by  means 
of  suitable  literature,  popular  lectures,  and  other  means.  This 
field  offers  a  great  and  useful  opportunity  to  mental  hygiene  so- 
cieties and  other  similar  organizations  for  disseminating  knowl- 
edge on  this  subject,  for,  under  present  conditions,  it  will  be 
many  years  before  local  communities  have  an  equal  realization 
of  the  nature  of  the  problem,  or  are  prepared  to  deal  with  it. 

The  principles  of  heredity  as  they  are  unfolded,  and  especially 
of  morbid  heredity,  should  be  taught  in  the  colleges,  the  normal 
schools,  and,  indeed,  in  the  high  schools.  The  adolescent  has  a 
right  to  be  informed  upon  a  subject  which  is  of  supreme  im- 


RURAL  HEALTH— MENTAL          223 

portance  to  himself,  to  his  family  and  to  his  descendants.  The 
great  majority  of  these  young  people  will  later  marry  and  become 
parents.  The  dangers  of  marriage  with  persons  of  diseased  stock 
should  be  presented  plainly.  The  most  important  point  is  that 
feeble-mindedness  is  highly  hereditary,  and  that  each  feeble- 
minded person  is  a  potential  source  of  an  endless  progeny  of 
defect.  No  feeble-minded  person  should  be  allowed  to  marry  or 
to  become  a  parent. 

Even  the  normal  members  of  a  definitely  tainted  family  may 
transmit  defect  to  their  own  children,  especially  if  they  mate 
with  one  with  similar  hereditary  tendencies.  If  the  hereditary 
tendency  is  marked  and  persistent,  the  normal  members  of  the 
family  should  not  marry.  Certain  families  should  become  ex- 
tinct. Parenthood  is  not  for  all.  Persons  of  good  heredity  run 
a  risk  of  entailing  defect  upon  their  descendants  when  they 
marry  into  a  family  with  this  hereditary  taint.  Intelligent  peo- 
ple are  usually  willing  to  forego  a  proposed  marriage  if  the  possi- 
bilities of  defective  heredity  in  that  mating  are  fully  under- 
stood. The  immediate  sacrifice  is  less  painful  than  the  future 
devoted  to  the  hopeless  care  of  feeble-minded  children.  The 
class  of  people  who  are  not  amenable  to  reason  in  respect  to  this 
question  must  be  dealt  with  through  the  general  educational  in- 
fluences which  have  been  outlined  in  this  report. 

When  the  natural  leaders  of  thought  in  the  community — the 
teachers,  physicians,  lawyers  and  clergymen — are  fully  informed 
on  this  subject  they  will  help  to  create  the  strong  public  senti- 
ment which  will  demand  the  passage  of  necessary  laws,  and  will 
secure  sufficient  appropriations  to  eventually  ensure  the  intelli- 
gent protection  and  control  of  the  feeble-minded  persons  in  that 
community. 

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Myers,  Harrisburg,  Pa.,  1900. 


CHAPTER  IX 
RURAL  RECREATION,  DRAMA,  ART 

EXTRACT  FROM  THE  WILL  OF 
CHARLES  LOUNSBURY 

*  *  ITEM  :  I  devise  to  boys  jointly  all  the  useful  fields  and  com- 
mons where  ball  may  be  played;  all  pleasant  waters  where  one 
may  swim;  all  snow-clad  hills  where  one  may  coast;  and  all 
streams  and  ponds  where  one  may  fish,  or  where,  when  grim 
winter  comes,  one  may  skate ;  to  have  and  to  hold  the  same  for 
the  period  of  their  boyhood. 

"Item:  To  young  men  jointly  I  devise  and  bequeath  all 
boisterous,  inspiring  sports  of  rivalry,  and  I  give  to  them  the 
disdain  of  weakness  and  undaunted  confidence  in  their  own 
strength,  though  they  be  rude ;  I  give  them  the  power  to  make 
lasting  friendships,  and  of  possessing  companions,  and  to  them 
exclusively  I  give  all  merry  songs  and  brave  choruses,  to  sing 
with  lusty  voices." 


THE  NEED  OF  PLAY  IN  RURAL  LIFE  x 

HENRY   S.    CURTIS 

IN  the  early  days  there  was  plenty  of  hunting  and  fishing,  and 
there  was  an  occasional  scalping  party,  conducted  by  the  Indians, 
which  gave  variety  to  life  and  prevented  it  from  being  dull. 
Such  conditions  brought  out  the  manhood  in  boys  and  awoke 
the  heroic  in  girls.  There  was  not  the  time  or  energy  or  often 
the  opportunity  for  vice.  Men  and  women  living  under  such 
conditions  did  not  see  the  need  of  play.  Life  itself  was  a  des- 
perate game  of  engrossing  interest.  The  farmer  has  been  too 

i  Adapted  from  Introduction,  "Play  and  Recreation,"  pp.  13-16,  Ginn, 
Boston,  1914. 

226 


RURAL  RECREATION  227 

busy  improving  his  farm  to  take  thought  of  social  conditions 
or  to  notice  the  change.  In  his  haste  to  be  rich,  he  has  forgotten 
to  live.  He  has  not  learned  to  love  nature  or  his  work.  He 
and  his  wife  are  working  too  long  hours  themselves,  and  working 
their  sons  and  daughters  too  long.  Following  a  plow  or  a  drag 
over  a  cultivated  field  is  not  as  interesting  as  felling  the  trees 
in  the  forest  and  burning  the  clearing.  Much  farm  machinery 
has  been  introduced  and  the  work  and  hardships  have  become 
less.  Perhaps  the  farm  is  not  less  interesting  to  the  adult  far- 
mer who  is  trained  to  handle  machinery  and  to  understand  the 
problems  with  which  he  has  to  deal,  but  country  life  is  vastly 
less  interesting  to  children  and  young  people,  because  its  danger 
and  romance  are  gone.  The  nature  appeal  of  great  forests, 
and  wild  animals  and  a  wild  life  is  gone.  The  adventure  and 
romance  and  exploration  are  gone.  The  opportunities  of  taking 
up  new  land  and  becoming  a  proprietor  have  largely  gone.  The 
cooperation  and  sociability  of  the  pioneer  have  been  replaced 
by  the  independence  that  has  come  with  safety  and  labor-saving 
devices.  The  rural  school  is  no  more  a  social  center.  The  re- 
sults of  these  conditions  are  upon  us.  Forty-three  per  cent,  of 
American  farms  are  now  held  by  tenants.  It  is  very  difficult 
if  not  impossible  to  get  either  a  hired  girl  or  a  hired  man  in 
most  sections.  The  more  capable  members  of  the  population  are 
drifting  toward  the  city,  and  there  is  a  vague  but  general  unrest 
and  dissatisfaction  among  the  younger  generation,  which  is  the 
outward  expression  of  this  hunger  for  a  larger  life. 

The  country  must  take  seriously  this  problem  of  readjust- 
ment. It  must  provide  some  substitute  for  the  adventtfre  and 
romance  and  sociability  that  have  disappeared.  It  must  break 
the  isolation  and  spirit  of  self-sufficiency  of  the*  modern  farm 
that  has  replaced  the  interdependence  and  sociability  of  the 
pioneer.  It  must  restore  to  the  country  school  at  least  as  much 
of  social  value  as  it  had  in  the  old  days  of  spelling  matches 
and  debates.  It  must  appropriate  for  itself  the  message  of  the 
modern  gospel  of  play.  This  should  not  come  to  the  country  as 
something  wholly  new,  but  rather  as  a  restoration  and  a  read- 
justment. It  is  essentially  an  effort  to  give  back  to  life  those 
fundamental  social  values  of  which  changing  conditions  have 
deprived  it. 


228  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Rural  life  has  become  over-serious  and  over-sordid.  It  must 
perceive  that  life  and  love  and  happiness,  not  wealth,  are  the 
objects  of  living.  There  must  be  injected  into  it  the  spirit  of 
play.  The  isolation  of  the  farm  home  must  be  broken  by  estab- 
lishing some  place  where  farm  people  will  frequently  meet  to- 
gether, and  the  colder  and  freer  months  must  be  more  largely 
utilized  for  education,  recreation,  .and  the  public  good.  The 
hours  of  work  must  be  reduced,  and  the  half  holiday  must  -be 
brought  in.  The  country  must  discover  again  in  its  daily  life 
the  adventure  and  romance  and  beauty  that  have  passed. 

All  too  often  in  these  years  of  earnest  struggle  for  success, 
the  children  have  been  only  a  by-product  of  the  farm.  The 
farmer  has  loved  and  cared  for  them,  but  the  rearing  and 
training  of  a  worthy  family  has  not  been  one  of  his  objects  in 
life.  He  has  cared  for  his  corn  and  potatoes,  but  his  children 
have  "just  growed."  Play  he  has  often  confounded  either  with 
idleness  or  exercise,  deeming  it  only  a  useless  waste  of  energy, 
better  devoted  to  pulling  weeds  or  washing  dishes.  Yet  play- 
fulness is  almost  synonymous  with  childhood;  it  is  the  deepest 
expression  of  the  child  soul,  and  nature's  instrument  for  fash- 
ioning him  to  the  human  plan.  Play  is  needed  by  the  country 
child  no  less  than  by  the  city  child ;  but,  with  decreasing  families 
and  enlarging  farms,  it  is  becoming  increasingly  difficult.  The 
equipment  that  is  necessary  must  be  introduced  into  the  home 
and  the  yard.  Play  must  be  organized  at  the  country  school,  as 
it  is  coming  to  be  at  the  city  school.  The  social  center,  the  Boy 
Scouts,  and  the  Camp  Fire  Girls  must  bring  back  the  adventure 
and  ro'mance  that  the  country  has  lost.  The  rural  school  must 
train  the  child  to  perceive  and  love  the  beauty  of  the  open  coun- 
try, to  hear  the  thousand  voices  Jn  which  Nature  speaks  to  her 
true  worshipers. 


RURAL  RECREATION  229 

PHYSICAL  EDUCATION  IN  RURAL  SCHOOLS  * 

LAURENCE    S.    HILL 

PHYSICAL  education  in  rural  schools  is  a  problem  that  has  not 
yet  been  satisfactorily  solved.  It  is  a  problem  that  presents  sev- 
eral angles.  We  must  determine  the  needs  not  alone  of  the  boys 
and  girls  of  the  rural  schools  but  also  the  needs  of  the  rural  com- 
munities in  a  physical,  moral  and  social  way.  We  must  deter- 
mine what  physical  education  should  include  and  how  to  in- 
augurate and  organize  its  various  phases. 

There  has  been  rather  consistent  opposition  to  physical  edu- 
cation in  the  rural  communities.  Judging  from  the  testimony 
of  several  district  superintendents  and  many  teachers  of  rural 
schools  and  from  our  own  experience  in  New  York  State,  we 
must  conclude  that  opposition  to  this  so-called  "fad"  has  its  be- 
ginning in  several  facts.  First,  it  involves  the  expenditure  of 
money.  This  has  been  our  experience  in  the  solution  of  most 
problems  as  well  as  in  the  accomplishment  of  most  aims.  The 
problem  is  indeed  difficult  of  solution  when  communities  come  to 
value  money  more  highly  than  they  do  activities  that  make  for 
greater  social,  moral  and  physical  efficiency.  It  is  easy  to  meas- 
ure the  value  of  tangible  things,  but  difficult  to  estimate  the 
growth  in  education,  refinement  and  culture  on  the  part  of  the 
child.  This  is  the  reason  why  people  generally  are  willing  to 
spend  money  in  those  things  the  results  of  which  are  apparent 
at  once  and  measurable  in  dollars  and  cents,  but  hesitate  and 
often  refuse  to  give  to  their  own  community  those  things  which 
are  necessary  for  the  fullest  development  of  the  boys  and  girls. 

Another  reason  for  opposition  to  physical  education  in  the 
rural  schools  is  that  the  people  of  these  communities  do  not 
realize  the  value  of  this  phase  of  education.  They  do  not  ap- 
preciate the  need  for  a  well-organized  health  program.  They 
haven't  the  right  conception  of  what  it  is,  what  it  includes  and 
what  it  should  accomplish.  The  feeling  is  general  that  they  are 
getting  all  the  physical  education  they  need  in  their  daily  labors. 
They  point  with  complacency  to  the  fact  that  they  have  all  the 

i  Adapted  from  American  Physical  Education  Revieic,  Jan..  1010,  pp.  27- 
32.  Read  before  the  Physical  Education  Dept,  N.  E.  A.,  Pittsburgh,  Pa., 
Julv  2,  1018 


230  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

fresh  air  there  is ;  the  city  people  may  need  physical  education, 
— not  they.  They  do  not  know  the  corrections  necessary  for  oc- 
cupational defects,  the  physical  need  of  social  life,  and  of  that 
type  of  activity  which  will  diminish  the  exaggerated  awkward- 
ness of  the  country  lad.  Here,  too,  the  rural  school-teacher  is 
apparently  lost.  She  is  apt  to  know  nothing  or  very  little  about 
physical  education  and  health  education.  She  takes  a  very 
small  part  in  the  affairs  of  the  community.  She  has  not  made 
herself  felt  in  the  life  of  the  child  out  of  t-he  school.  The  teach- 
ing of  physical  training  seems  but  to  add  one  more  burden  to 
the  many  she  is  already  carrying.  She  is  not  capable  of  giving 
a  good  account  of  herself  in  the  health  education  of  the  child. 
She  therefore  is  opposed  to  it.  Not  the  least  of  all  causes  for 
opposition  is  that  in  many  of  those  districts  where  physical  train- 
ing has  already  been  inaugurated  the  instructors  supervising 
the  work  have  not  been  •  properly  trained.  Their  knowledge  of 
physical  education  is  limited.  Is  it  not  just  possible  that  this 
last-mentioned  fact  may  in  some  degree  be  attributed  to  the  sys- 
tems of  physical  training J  common  in  various  institutions  of 
learning  throughout  the  country  in  which  the  supervisor,  per- 
chance, has  learned  gymnastics  but  missed  the  mark  in  physical 
education  ?  From  some  of  these  institutions  one  gets  the  notion 
that  athletics  is  physical  training,  or  calisthenics  is  physical  train- 
ing, and  that  these  activities  comprise  all  there  is  to  physical 
training.  The  institutions  themselves  seem  to  have  the  idea  that 
they  are  promoting  physical  training,  for  upon  investigation  we 
find  published  in  their  catalogs  the  statement  that  they  have 
courses  in  physical  culture  and  naturally  we  find  the  students 
going  out  from  these  institutions  to  promote  the  same  type  of  edu- 
cation. With  such  conditions  it  is  little  wonder  that  we  find  op- 
position to  physical  training  as  a  part  of  the  school  curriculum. 
Now  what  can  we  do  to  overcome  this  opposition?  We  must 
go  slowly.  We  may  give  entertainments,  play  and  athletic  festi- 
vals with  as  many  children  taking  part  as  is  possible.  This  is  the 
best  means  of  popularizing  the  work  I  know  of.  At  these  festi- 
vals offer  games  or  events  suitable  for  adults,  especially  those 
activities  that  bring  back  fond  memories.  Don't  lose  an  oppor- 
tunity of  getting  the  parents  to  the  school  or  playground  to  in- 
spect the  work. 


RURAL  RECREATION  231 

I  have  received  many  reports  from  rural  school  supervisors 
of  physical  training  concerning  the  ctifficult  task  of  winning  the 
support  of  teachers,  parents,  and  trustees.  In  every  instance 
where  festivals  or  physical  training  demonstrations  have  been 
given  these  supervisors  and  their  superintendents  have  been  en- 
thusiastic over  the  support  of  the  community  won  for  the  work 
as  a  direct  result  of  these  demonstrations.  People  will  listen  to 
talks  on  various  health  topics  and  become  enthusiastic  supporters 
of  a  health  program  once  they  are  won  over  to  what  physical 
education  means.  You  must  show  them  what  they  are  getting 
for  their  money. 

The  most  vital  factor  in  the  physical  education  program  is  after 
all  the  teacher  and  the  supervisor.  People  of  proper  training,  of 
faculty  for  the  work,  with  enthusiastic  interest,  and  with  a  vision 
of  the  possibilities  of  the  work  and  opportunity  for  service  will 
do  more  to  develop  wholesome  recreational  and  civic  activities 
than  any  other  possible  agency.  They  will  popularize  this  train- 
ing in  the  rural  communities  and  wipe  out  the  opposition  to  it. 

And  now  we  must  determine  the  needs  of  the  boys  and  girls  of 
the  rural  schools  and  of  the  rural  communities.  These  must 
necessarily  be  stated  in  general  terms.  In  the  first  place  health- 
ful and  attractive  surroundings  are  essential  to  the  physical, 
mental,  social  and  moral  welfare  of  the  children  and  to  the  life  of 
the  community.  Instruction  in  personal  hygiene  and  sanitation 
of  the  schoolroom  and  yard  is  needed,  and  in  order  not  to  blush 
with  embarrassment  and  to  teach  effectively,  hygienic  and  sani- 
tary conditions  must  exist,  beginning  with  the  teacher  and  the 
buildings.  It  is  useless  to  preach  if  preaching  is  all  we  do.  It 
is  absolutely  necessary  for  the  boys  and  girls  to  learn  these  laws 
of  health  through  observation  and  practice.  Attention  must  be 
called  to  them  of  course.  Morning  inspection  of  pupils'  room, 
buildings  and  yard  must  be  conducted.  These  must  be  followed 
up  by  visits  to  the  home  to  see  that  instructions  are  carried 
out. 

School  life  is  a  severe  nervous  strain  if  the  child  is  expected  to 
always  observe  proper  decorum  and  to  sit  still  for  long  periods. 
We  are  fighting  nature  if  we  compel  the  child  to  do  this.  On  the 
other  hand  school  life  will  not  become  a  nervous  strain  if  suffi- 
cient periods  are  given  for  relaxation  and  physical  exercise.  In- 


232  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

hibition  is  one  of  the  needs  of  the  child,  but  all  inhibition  and  no 
relaxation  makes  of  the  child  a  nervous  wreck.  It  is  not  a  ques- 
tion of  whether  the  school  program  affords  time  for  this  relaxa- 
tion through  activity,  it  is  a  matter  of  changing  our  school  pro- 
gram if  necessary  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  child.  We  are  begin- 
ning to  get  away  from  the  obsolete  idea  of  fitting  the  child  to  our 
system  of  education.  In  the  rural  communities,  this  idea  makes 
way  very  slowly.  In  making  our  education  satisfy  the  needs  of 
the  child  the  first  need  which  appears  is  his  physical  need. 

Traditional  school  life  has  a  harmful  effect  upon  the  normal 
posture  of  the  body,  and  poor  posture  in  turn  works  great  havoc 
with  the  health  of  the  child  because  of  the  crowding  of  the  vital 
organs  of  the  body.  Muscular  weakness,  fatigue  and  the  occu- 
pations of  rural  life  are  common  factors  of  bad  posture.  The. 
rapid  growth  of  children  which  saps  the  power  and  efficiency 
of  the  muscles,  the  excessive  fatigue  of  supporting  muscles  which 
results  from  hard  labor,  and  long  periods  of  sitting  and  standing 
are  other  common  causes  of  bad  posture.  The  need  of  postural 
exercise  is  apparent.  The  natural  tendency  to  avoid  the  fatigue 
of  holding  one  fixed  position  is  one  cause  of  the  restlessness  of 
children. 

Rhythm  and  grace  of  movement  is  a  need  of  the  child.  Ob- 
serve how  one  moves,  walks,  and  talks  and  you  will  learn  a  great 
deal  about  him.  The  habitual  rhythm  of  motion  is  fundamental 
for  full  intellectual  development.  There  is  a  profound  and  close 
relationship  between  our  muscle  habits  and  thinking.  The  rural 
child  is  conspicuously  wanting  in  spontaneous  graceful  move- 
ments. We  know,  now,  enough  about  the  developments  of  chil- 
dren and  adolescents  to  know  that  the  powers  of  activity  are 
always  developed  before  the  powers  of  control.  A  great  many 
people  live  and  die  undeveloped.  They  have  no  control.  No 
phase  of  our  education  can  train  the  individual  in  this  respect 
quite  as  well  as  can  games,  athletics,  rhythmic  exercises,  exercises 
to  response  commands,  and  other  branches  of  physical  training. 
Nowhere  will  boys  and  girls  receive  this  type  of  training  if  not 
during  the  years  of  school  life. 

The  children  of  the  soil  need  physical,  mental  and  moral  cour- 
age. Exercises  and  games  which  require  nerve,  daring,  courage 
and  skill  should  be  given.  Through  the  appointment  of  leaders 


RURAL  RECREATION  233 

the  individuals  acquire  confidence  in  themselves  and  the  ability  to 
lead  others.  They  will  acquire  the  ability  to  stand  defeat  as 
gracefully  as  victory,  recognition  of  the  rights  of  others,  coop- 
eration, self-subordination  for  the  good  of  the  majority,  and 
leadership  through  team  games  and  athletics.  These  rural  chil- 
dren need,  perhaps  more  than  any  other  one  thing,  the  social 
aspect  of  these  games  and  contests.  Rural  communities  must 
have  more  wholesome  social  life.  There  is  a  dire  need  for  social 
centers  in  the  country.  Entertainments,  festivals,  and  commu- 
nity "sings"  will  do  more  to  bring  our  country  brothers  out  of 
their  shells  than  any  type  of  activity  yet  observed,  and  the  vehicle 
for  inaugurating  these  social  gatherings  is  the  supervisor  of 
physical  training,  who  must  act  as  a  general  community  leader. 

We  must  give  these  children  something  they  can  use  when 
through  school  as  well  as  develop  them  while  in  school.  We  must 
develop  the  habit  of  wholesome  exercise  for  after  school  life. 

Activities  that  develop  health,  strength,  intelligence  and  char- 
acter must  be  given  in  order  to  give  the  rural  children  the  fullest 
measure  of  physical  education.  Those  activities  are  manifold. 
They  should  be  utilized  during  frequent  periods  in  the  school  pro- 
gram during  recess  and  after  school.  Directed  play  is  needed 
for  the  rural  children  far  more  than  for  their  city  cousins. 

To  sum  up  these  needs  we  may  say  that  the  rural  child  requires 
a  special  type  of  activity.  It  is  useless  to  preach  morality,  self- 
control,  recognition  of  the  rights  of  others,  altruism,  self-confi- 
dence, determination,  loyalty,  cooperation,  courage,  skill,  and  a 
host  of  other  attributes  which  the  individual  should  acquire  in 
school,  if  mere  preaching  is  all  that  is  attempted.  It  is  necessary 
to  give  the  individual  opportunity  to  learn  these  valuable  lessons 
for  himself,  and  this  he  can  do  through  normal  directed  activity 
better  than  he  can  in  any  other  way.  Children  need  activity  in- 
tended to  promote  health,  and  body  as  well  as  moral  discipline; 
activities  for  the  health  and  happiness  of  all  boys  and  girls  at  the 
same  time  as  the  mental  and  moral  training.  They  need  to  real- 
ize the  obligations  to  the  society  in  which  they  live,  and  to  have 
a  readiness  of  spirit  and  body  to  meet  those  obligations  in  daily 
life.  They  need  to  be  made  conscious  of  the  fact  that  it  is  not 
for  themselves  alone  that  they  sing  patriotic  songs,  perform  daily 
drills,  play  games  and  undergo  health  examinations,  but  for 


234  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

themselves  as  happier,  healthier,  more  efficient  members  of  the 
community  in  which  they  live. 

Space  should  be  provided  to  serve  not  only  for  the  drills,  plays, 
games,  competitions  and  the  like  but  also  for  entertainments  and 
community  gatherings. 

In  order  to  inaugurate  a  program  of  this  character  it  is  neces- 
sary that  each  community  should  have  a  general  community 
leader.  Whatever  the  future  may  develop  in  bringing  this  need 
to  a  practical  realization  in  terms  of  specific  organization,  for  the 
present,  at  least,  this  work  must  be  done  by  the  local  leader  of 
physical  education.  Now  the  usual  instruction  afforded  by  the 
majority  of  courses  in  physical  education  fails  properly  to  equip 
its  product  with  the  necessary  training.  The  physical  director 
in  a  rural  community,  to  be  able  properly  to  work  out  this  pro- 
gram, must  have  a  very  definite  and  concrete  notion  of  personal 
and  school  hygiene,  health  and  sanitary  inspections,  inspection 
for  signs  of  abnormality,  and  injury  or  illness,  for  conditions 
which  call  for  immediate  attention  on  the  part  of  the  teacher, 
and  for  signs  of  disordered  health  for  which  children  should  be 
kept  at  home ;  for  conditions  productive  of  bodily  deformity,  pos- 
ture, and  the  like;  of  the  detection  of  defective  sight  and  hear- 
ing; of  the  organization  and  duties  of  health  officers  and  pupil 
sanitary  inspectors;  she  must  have  a  very  definite  and  concrete 
notion  of  physical  training,  including  calisthenics,  athletics, 
games,  dancing,  swimming,  etc.,  and  all  those  terms  imply,  and 
the  practical  conduct  and  organization  of  these  various  phases  of 
physical  training  into  a  rational  health  program;  she  must  have 
a  very  definite  and  concrete  notion  of  the  nature  and  function 
of  play,  of  child  nature,  of  festivals  and  entertainments  for  old 
and  young,  of  the  social  center  or  community  center;  and  she 
must  have  a  vision  of  the  service  and  duties  of  a  general  com- 
munity leader  as  well  as  a  technical  knowledge  of  her  subject. 

I  wish  I  had  time  to  elaborate  on  the  training  of  a  so-called 
general  community  leader.  At  Cornell  University  we  have  made 
a  special  study  of  the  needs  of  the  rural  boys  and  girls  and  of 
the  rural  communities.  A  Division  of  Physical  Education  in  the 
Rural  Education  Department  of  the  Summer  Session  of  the  Col- 
lege of  Agriculture  has  been  organized  for  the  purpose  of  train- 
ing teachers  of  physical  education  as  general  community  leaders 


RURAL  RECREATION  235 

for  the  rural  districts.  Besides  the  general  training  courses  for 
physical  directorships,  special  emphasis  is  made  on  personal 
hygiene  and  school  hygiene  and  school  inspection,  physical  diag- 
nosis, first  aid  and  home  nursing,  with  opportunities  for  hos- 
pital practice  for  the  training  in  the  duties  of  the  rural  school 
nurse ;  games,-  athletics  and  folk  dancing  with  special  reference 
to  organized,  directed  rural  recreation;  psychology  and  child 
study,  rural  leadership  and  administration  and  rural  sociology; 
and  the  practical  organization  and  conduct  of  a  department  of 
entertainments,  demonstrations,  festivals  and  pageants.  "We  feel 
that  teachers  with  faculty  for  the  work,  with  enthusiastic  inter- 
est and  such  training  will  solve  the  health  problem  in  the  rural 
districts  of  New  York  State. 

The  oft-repeated  assertion — that  the  rural  communities  are  the 
basic  social  organization  upon  which  rests  the  stability  of  the  na- 
tion— still  holds  true.  A  proper  conception,  therefore,  of  rural 
physical  education,  is  a  fundamental  educational  necessity  if 
a  definite  program  of  development  is  needed.  An  adequately 
trained  personnel  to  put  this  program  in  operation  is  the  first 
step  in  this  direction.  In  some  of  the  states,  this  idea  is  already 
taking  definite  form  in  legislation  and  in  educational  organiza- 
tions. A  nation-wide  movement  to  this  end  is  indicated  for  the 
near  future.  This  body  can  do  no  more  constructive  service  for 
the  general  advancement  of  physical  education  in  America  than 
by  a  sane  and  enthusiastic  support  of  that  important  phase  of 
physical  education  so  urgently  needed  in  rural  communities. 


WHAT  THE  PEOPLE  LIKE  1 

523  COMMUNITIES  IN  PENNSYLVANIA 

WARREN  H.  WILSON 

Baseball  29  per  cent.  Skating  3  per  cent. 

Social  and  picnics.  .18  per  cent.  Dancing    — ...  3  per  cent. 

Pool  and  Billiards.. 13  per  cent.  Cards    3  per  cent. 

Moving  picture  Basketball 3  per  cent. 

shows    11  per  cent.  Football   3  per  cent. 

i  Adapted  from  "Rural   Survey  in  Penna.,"   p.   17.     Department  of  the 
Church  and  Country  Life,  Pres.  Board  of  Home  Missions. 


236  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Gymnasium  athletics  5  per  cent.      Tennis    3  per  cent. 

Concerts  and  Bowling   2  per  cent. 

lectures 3  per  cent.      Golf  1  per  cent. 


THE  FARM  PLAYGROUND  * 

W.    H.    JENKINS 

THE  following  words  were  spoken  by  a  very  successful  far- 
mer, who  brought  up  a  fine  family  of  boys  on  the  farm : 

I  brought  up  seven  boys  on  the  farm.  Every  one  wanted  to  stay  on  the 
farm  until  they  grew  to  manhood.  They  are  successful  business  men  with 
good  habits  of  life.  Some  are  farmers,  and  some  in  other  occupations  for 
which  their  gifts  best  fitted  them.  The  boys  stayed  at  home  and  worked 
with  me,  because  there  were  more  attractions  and  enjoyments  for  them 
there  than  in  any  other  place.  We  all  worked  together.  We  paid  for 
one  farm  and  then  bought  another  and  paid  for  it,  and  when  one  of  the 
boys  went  into  business  for  himself,  his  training,  habits  of  life,  and  a 
little  capital  we  had  for  him,  assured  his  success.  One  of  the  main  reasons 
why  my  boys  loved  the  farm  life  and  home  so  well  that  they  never  wanted 
any  of  the  dissipations  that  are  demoralizing,  and  which  the  young  people 
on  the  farm  engage  in  because  there  is  nothing  that  satisfies  their  natural 
love  for  play  and  recreation,  was  that  I  spent  $30  to  build  a  playground 
where  they  could  play  baseball,  tennis  or  croquet,  and  I  played  with  them. 
I  have  stopped  work  right  in  haying  time  to  play  with  the  boys  and  then 
we  all  worked  better  for  the  change. 

The  above  is  the  testimony  of  a  man  who  was  successful  both 
in  making  the  farm  pay,  and  in  bringing  out  the  best  qualities 
of  manhood  in  boys,  so  that  they  made  men  of  such  intelligence 
and  vitality  and  character  that  they  were  prepared  to  overcome 
difficulties  and  win  the  battle  in  the  struggle  of  life. 


DRAMA  FOR  RURAL  COMMUNITIES  2 

ALFRED   G.    ARVOLD 

THE  United  States  Department  of  Agriculture  recently  sent 
out  hundreds  of  letters  to  farmers'  wives  asking  them  what 
would  make  life  on  the  farm  more  attractive.  Hundreds  of  the 

1  Adapted  from  the  Rural  New  Yorker,  N.  Y.,  June  29,  1912. 

2  Adapted  from  American  Review  of  Reviews,  54:  309-311,  1916. 


RURAL  DRAMA  237 

replies,  which  were  received  from  practically  every  section,  told 
the  story  of  social  starvation.  They  wanted  some  place  to  go. 
They  wanted  to  be  entertained.  Moral  degeneracy  in  the  coun- 
try, like  the  city,  is  usually  due  to  lack  of  proper  social  recrea- 
tion. When  people  have  something  healthful  with  which  to  oc- 
cupy their  minds  they  rarely  think  of  wrongdoing. 

The  impulse  of  building  up  a  community  spirit  in  a  rural 
neighborhood  may  come  from  without,  but  the  real  work  of 
socialization  must  come  from  within.  The  country  people  them- 
selves must  work  out  their  own  civilization. 

With  a  knowledge  of  these  basic  facts  in  the  mind  the  idea 
of  the  Little  Country  Theater  was  conceived.  The  theater  be- 
came a  reality  when  a  dingy  old  chapel  on  the  second  floor  of 
the  administration  building  at  the  North  Dakota  Agricultural 
College,  located  at  Fargo,  was  remodeled  into  what  is  now  known 
as  the  Little  Country  Theater.  It  is  simpty  a  large  playhouse 
placed  under  a  reducing-glass,  and  is  just  the  size  of  the  aver- 
age country  town  hall.  The  decorations  are  plain  and  simple, 
the  color  scheme  being  a  green  and  gold. 

Simplicity  is  the  keynote  of  the  theater,  for  it  was  not  meant 
for  the  institution  alone,  but  for  every  rural  community  in 
North  Dakota  and  the  rest  of  America  as  well.  It  is  an  ex- 
ample of  what  can  be  done  with  hundreds  of  village  halls,  un- 
used portions  of  school-houses,  and  garrets  and  basements  of 
country  homes  and  country  churches. 

The  object  of  the  Little  Country  Theater  movement  is  to  pro- 
duce such  plays  and  community  programs  as  can  be  easily  staged 
in  just  such  places,  or,  in  fact,  in  any  place  where  people  as- 
semble for  social  betterment.  Its  principal  function  is  to  stim- 
ulate an  interest  for  good,  clean  drama  and  original  enter- 
tainment among  the  people  living  in  the  open  country  and 
villages,  in  order  to  help  them  find  themselves  and  become 
better  satisfied  with  the  community  in  which  they  live.  In 
other  words,  its  real  purpose  is  to  use  the  drama,  and  all  thfiat 
goes  with  the  drama,  as  a  sociological  force  in  getting  people 
together  and  acquainted  with  each  other,  so  that  they  may  find 
out  the  hidden  life  forces  of  nature  itself.  Instead  of  making 
the  drama  a  luxury  for  the  classes,  its  aim  is  to  make  it  an  in- 
strument for  the  enlightenment  and  enjoyment  of  the  masses. 


238  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  work  of  the  Little  Country  Theater  has  more  than  justi- 
fied its  existence.  It  has  produced  scores  of  plays  and  com- 
munity programs.  The  people  who  have  participated  in  them 
seem  to  have  caught  the  spirit.  One  group  of  young  people 
from  various  sections  of  the  State  represented  five  different  na- 
tionalities— Scotch,  Irish,  English,  Norwegian  and  Swedish— 
successfully  staging  "The  Fatal  Message,"  a  one-act  comedy 
by  John  Kendrick  Bangs.  In  order  to  depict  Russian  life,  one 
of  the  dramatic  clubs  in  the  institution  gave  "A  Russian  Honey- 
moon." Another  cast  of  characters  from  the  country  presented 
"Cherry  Tree  Farm,"  an  English  comedy,  in  a  most  accept- 
able manner.  "Leonarda,"  a  play  by  Bjornsterne  Bjornson, 
was  presented  by  the  Edwin  Booth  Dramatic  Club  and  was  un- 
doubtedly one  of  the  best  plays  ever  staged  in  the  Little  Coun- 
try Theater.  An  orchestra  played  Norwegian  music  between 
the  acts. 

An  illustration  to  demonstrate  that  a  home-talent  play  is  a 
dynamic  force  in  helping  people  to  find  themselves  is  afforded 
in  the  presentation  of  "The  Country  Life  Minstrels"  by  the 
Agricultural  Club,  an  organization  of  young  men  coming  en- 
tirely from  country  districts.  The  story  reads  like  a  romance. 
The  club  decided  to  give  a  minstrel  show.  At  the  first  re- 
hearsal, nobody  exhibited  any  talent  except  one  young  man. 
He  could  clog.  At  the  second  rehearsal  a  tenor  and  a  mandolin 
player  were  discovered;  at  the  third,  several  good  voices  were 
found;  whereupon  a  quartet  and  a  twelve-piece  band  were 
organized.  When  the  play  was  presented,  twenty-eight  young 
men  furnished  an  excellent  entertainment.  During  the  last  three 
years  nearly  twenty  young  ladies,  the  majority  from  country 
districts,  have  presented  short  plays.  Each  of  them  has  also 
selected  the  production,  but  they  have  promoted  the  play  and 
trained  the  cast  of  characters  as  well.  When  Percy  MacKaye, 
the  well-known  dramatist,  visited  the  Little  Country  Theater, 
four  young  men  presented  "Sam  Average."  "The  Traveling 
Man,"  a  miracle  play,  was  presented,  in  honor  of  Lady  Gregory, 
of  Ireland,  on  her  last  tour  of  America.  Many  other  stand- 
ard plays  have  also  been  presented  by  these  rural  amateurs  as 
well  as  a  number  of  original  productions. 


RURAL  DRAMA  239 

Several  original  plays  have  been  presented  to  large  crowds. 
Three  of  these,  "For  the  Cause,"  "A  New  Liberator"  and 
"Bridging  the  Chasm,"  made  an  unusually  fine  impression 
upon  the  audiences.  They  were  written  under  the  direction  of 
Abbie  Simmons,  writer  of  plays  and  a  splendid  student  of  the 
drama. 

Perhaps  the  most  interesting  incidents  which  have  occurred 
in  connection  with  the  work  of  the  Little  Country  Theater  were 
the  presentation  of  "A  Farm  Home  Scene  in  Iceland  Thirty 
Years  Ago,"  "The  Prairie  Wolf,"  "Back  to  the  Farm"  and  "A 
Bee  in  a  Drone's  Hive."  All  of  these  productions  have  come 
out  of  the  country  people  themselves.  Standing  room  was  at  a 
premium.  The  Little  Country  Theater  could  not  hold  the 
crowds,  80  per  cent,  of  the  people  being  farmers  who  were  eager 
to  see  the  drama  of  their  creation. 

"A  Farm!  Home  Scene  in  Iceland  Thirty  Years  Ago"  was 
staged  by  twenty  young  men  and  women  of  Icelandic  descent 
whose  homes  are  in  the  country  districts  of  North  Dakota.  The 
tableau  was  very  effective.  The  scene  represented  an  interior 
sitting-room  of  an  Icelandic  home.  The  walls  were  whitewashed ; 
in  the  rear  of  the  room  was  a  fireplace ;  the  old  grandfather  was 
seated  in  an  arm-chair  near  the  fireplace  reading  a  story  in  the 
Icelandic  language.  About  the  room  were  several  young  ladies 
in  native  costumes,  busily  engaged  in  spinning  yarn  and  knit- 
ting, a  favorite  pastime  of  an  Icelandic  home.  On  a  chair  at 
the  right  was  a  young  man  with  a  violin  playing  selections  from 
an  Icelandic  composer.  Through  the  small  window  rays  of  light 
were  thrown,  representing  the  midnight  sun  and  the  northern 
lights.  Just  before  the  curtain  fell,  twenty  young  people,  all 
Icelanders,  joined  in  singing  their  national  song,  which  has  the 
same  tune  as  "America."  The  effect  of  the  tableau  was  far- 
reaching.  The  two  hundred  people  who  saw  it  will  never  for- 
get it. 

"The  Prairie  AVolf,"  a  play  written  by  a  young  man  named 
John  Lange,  was  staged  in  the  Little  Country  Theater  before  an 
audience  representing  more  than  thirty  rural  communities  in  the 
State.  The  play  was  not  only  written  by  a  young  farmer,  but  it 
was  staged  and  rehearsed  by  country  people.  It  was  a  tre- 


240  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

mendous  success.  Dozens  of  communities  in  the  State  have  al- 
ready asked  for  permission  to  present  it.  The  action  throughout 
the  play  was  superb. 

"Back  to  the  Farm,"  written  by  a  student  of  the  Minnesota 
Agricultural  College,  was  presented  on  three  successive  nights 
during  the  Tri-State  Grain-Growers'  Convention,  which  is  held 
every  year  in  the  city  of  Fargo.  Seven  hundred  and  fifty  per- 
sons, 90  per  cent,  of  them  country  people,  witnessed  this  produc- 
tion. Hundreds  were  turned  away  from  the  theater.  The  cast 
of  characters  in  the  play  was  made  up  entirely  of  young  people 
from  the  country. 

Last  fall,  Cecil  Baker,  a  young  farmer  from  Edmunds,  N.  D., 
who  has  caught  the  social  vision  of  the  soil,  came  to  my  office 
with  a  manuscript  of  a  play  which  he  had  written  entitled  "A 
Bee  in  a  Drone's  Hive,  or  a  A  Farmer  in  the  City."  Mr. 
Baker  wanted  his  friends  to  present  it,  and  they  did.  Two 
hundred  and  fifty  people  saw  the  production.  Some  said  it  was 
the  greatest  argument  in  favor  of  country  life  that  had  ever 
been  presented.  Others  were  astounded  at  the  naturalness  of 
the  make-up  and  the  costuming  of  the  characters.  Everybody 
was  more  than  satisfied. 

The  influence  of  the  Little  Country  Theater  in  the  State  as 
well  as  the  Nation  has  been  far-reaching.  Scarcely  a  day  passes 
but  somebody  writes  asking  for  data  in  regard  to  it,  or  for 
copies  of  plays,  and  matter  for  presentation  on  public  programs. 
These  letters  tell  an  intensely  interesting  story  of  the  social 
condition  of  the  community.  During  the  past  few  years,  in 
North  Dakota,  hundreds  of  people  young  and  old  have  partici- 
pated in  home-talent  productions  and  community  programs. 
Thousands  of  pieces  of  play-matter  and  pamphlets  have  been 
loaned  to  individuals,  literary  societies,  farmers'  clubs,  civic 
clubs,  and  other  organizations.  While  the  Little  Country 
Theater  is  located  in  North  Dakota,  it  nevertheless  stands  ready 
to  assist  other  communities  in  every  way  possible  to  develop 
community  life. 


RURAL  DRAMA  241 

THE  MIRACLE  PLAY  AT  POMFRET,  CONNECTICUT  x 

ELLA   M.   BOULT 

Two  months  earlier  our  Neighborhood  Association  had  been 
organized,  and  had  already  proved  itself  responsible  to  every 
call  upon  it.  We  had  not  believed  that  its  varying  elements 
would  make  common  cause  so  readily.  It  had  developed  a  sur- 
prising unity  of  interests,  and  a  sympathetic  and  hearty  coopera- 
tion in  developing  those  interests.  And  now  Christmas  was 
approaching,  supreme  season  of  festival  and  celebration.  What 
should  we  do  to  commemorate  it — we,  whose  very  foundation 
stone  was  brotherhood,  community  of  interests,  fellowship,  good- 
will? 

Back  of  us  were  three  church  societies:  the  Congregational, 
sentinel  and  saint  of  every  New  England  village ;  the  Episcopal, 
always  proudly  assured  in  its  sense  of  power ;  and  the  far-reach- 
ing, never  flagging  Roman  Catholic.  All  three  are  generous  in 
their  response  to  the  material  demands  of  Christmas,  as  they 
are  devout  in  spiritual  ministrations  at  this  and  all  seasons  of 
the  year.  From  all  three,  and  from  without  the  church,  we  draw 
our  membership.  Not  only  are  we  of  many  creeds  but  of  many 
vocations,  and  especially  of  many  nations.  Our  Irish  and 
Swedish  membership  equals  our  native  Puritan  elements;  we 
have  a  number  of  English  and  Scotch  members,  and  a  few  Swiss, 
Italian,  Portuguese,  Canadians  and  Negroes. 

As  to  vocation  we  are  largely  working  people,  and  are  of  all 
trades — domestic  workers,  day-laborers,  carpenters  and  builders, 
preachers,  teachers,  painters,  plumbers,  merchants,  farmers.  It 
is  true  that  in  our  community  we  have  a  large  number  of  the 
leisure  class,  so  called.  Who  shall  say  that  they  are  not  the 
busiest  of  all  classes?  Certainly  from  them  we  may  draw  a  sym- 
pathetic and  helpful  portion  of  our  membership. 

Above  all  it  (the  festival)  must  be  expressive  of  the  great  event 
that  it  commemorates.  Throughout  the  ages  Christmas  has  never 
weakened  in  its  tremendous  significance.  Bells  ring,  candles 
glow,  greetings  and  gifts  and  good  cheer  abound ;  but  always,  be- 
low these  surface  manifestations,  there  is  the  Manger  at  Bethle- 

i  Adapted  from  Country  Life  in  America,  25:49-56,  December,  1913. 


242  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

hem,  the  transfigured  Mother,  the  pondering  Joseph,  the  dumb 
brutes,  the  night,  the  stars,  the  shepherds  keeping  watch  over 
their  flocks  by  night,  the  glory  of  the  Lord,  the  heavenly  hosts, 
the  miracle  of  miracles.  Our  impulse  was  toward  the  wonderful 
reality.  We  did  not  approach  the  undertaking  without  trepida- 
tion. With  material  so  heterogeneous  could  we  maintain  the 
solemnity  of  our  subject,  sacred  in  itself  and  wrapt  round  with 
centuries  of  mystical  beauty? 

Our  shepherds  were  boys  from  the  farms ;  our  angelic  hosts 
were  made  up  of  girls  in  their  teens ;  our  wise  men  were,  one  a 
Frenchman,  one  a  Moor,  and  one  a  native  of  New  England  stock; 
by  trade  they  were  a  plumber,  a  day  laborer  and  the  village 
storekeeper  and  postmaster ;  the  retinues  of  the  Magi  were  school 
boys  as  full  of  life  and  spirit  and  mischief  as  the  average  boy; 
Joseph  was  an  Italian  laborer,  Mary  a  young  Irish  girl.  The 
only  representative  of  the  brute  world  was  Laddie,  our  beautiful 
collie,  typical  of  the  shepherd's  -calling.  Laddie  had  had  no 
more  dramatic  training  than  the  others,  but  his  instinct  proved 
like  theirs,  perfect.  When,  a  few  months  later,  he  died,  he 
was  mourned  far  and  wide  as  the  ' '  dog  that  came  with  the  shep- 
herds to  see  the  Babe  in  the  manger." 

The  event  proved  that  faith  in  our  people,  however  great,  was 
still  less  than  their  due.  Nothing  more  beautiful  came  of  our 
miracle  play  than  the  devout  spirit  of  our  young  actors.  It 
seemed  to  our  Italian  workman  an  astounding  thing  that  he 
should  take  the  role  of  San  Giuseppe  but  no  art  could  have  taught 
him  the  profound  gravity  that  he  assumed.  It  came  from 
within,  from  the  solemn  realization  of  the  verities.  There  is 
sometimes  in  human  nature  a  certain  simplicity  that  responds 
like  the  heart  of  a  child  to  the  elemental  without.  This  quality 
nurtured  beyond  any  doubt  by  country  life,  has  shown  itself 
more  and  more  to  be  a  characteristic  of  our  people. 

When  the  curtain  fell  upon  the  last  scene  of  our  little  drama 
there  was  silence — a  silence  of  deep  emotion.  The  lights  came 
on  with  an  incongruous  glare,  thrusting  us  with  a  rude  jolt 
forward  into  the  twentieth  century.  They  disclosed  an  audience 
unable  to  speak.  The  "Silent  Night"  melody  that  still  filled 
the  air  resolved  itself  again  into  words  in  an  effort  to  make  ar- 
ticulate the  spell  that  kept  us  dumb.  Haydn,  even  in  his  great- 


RURAL  DRAMA  243 

est  masterpieces,  never  surpassed  this  theme  in  its  elemental,  pas- 
toral quality,  so  touchingly  eloquent  of  the  open  country,  the 
starlight,  the  rudeness  and  homeliness  of  the  stable,  the  peace, 
the  calm,  the  vastness  of  the  event. 


WHAT  THE  PAGEANT  CAN  DO  FOR  THE  TOWN  1 

GEORGE  P.   BAKER 

HOLIDAYS,  which  should  be  of  interest  to  all,  and  not  a  mere 
excuse  for  idleness  that  leads  to  drinking  or  other  vice,  are  in  far 
too  many  cases  ill  used.  The  growth  of  competitive  outdoor 
sports  in  fitting  season  is  a  move  in  the  right  direction,  for  they 
employ  many  and  entertain  more ;  they  are  democratic  and 
healthful.  Clearly  the  desideratum  for  our  holidays  is  some- 
thing which  interests  and  occupies,  as  participants  or  audience, 
as  many  people  as  possible,  which  does  not  emphasize  social  or 
money  distinctions,  and  which  produces  something  more  than 
momentary  pleasure.  This  is  just  what  the  modern  pageant,  as 
to  some  extent  already  developed  in  the  United  States  and  widely 
successful  in  England,  provides. 

What  is  a  pageant  then?  "Something  between  a  play  and  a 
procession."  It  is  not  merely  processioning  by  people  in  fancy 
costumes,  nor  tableaux  on  fixed  or  movable  stages,  nor  dancing, 
nor  instrumental  or  vocal  music,  nor  dramatic  scenes  in  prose  or 
verse.  It  may  be  all  of  these,  or  some  of  these,  combined.  It  is 
a  composite  form  that  stands  between  a  procession  like  that  of 
the  trades  or  of  the  Antiques  and  Horribles  and  a  regular  play. 
As  to  place  or  scene  it  is  not  limited,  but  may  be  given  indoors  or 
outdoors,  though  outdoor  performances  are  usually  more  pic- 
turesque, make  it  possible  to  use  more  performers  and  provide 
comfortably  for  a  larger  audience.  Its  aims  in  setting  are  pic- 
turesqueness  and  space  sufficient  for  free  movement  by  the  many 
people  taking  part. 

Nor  is  the  pageant  limited  as  to  subject.  It  may  revivify  the 
history  of  state,  city,  town,  village,  college,  school  or  individual. 
It  may  be  an  allegory  conveying  some  stimulating  idea  or  moral 

1  Adapted  from  Ladies'  Home  Journal,  April,  1914,  p.  44. 


244  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

lesson,  or  a  pageant  of  education,  of  beauty  or  of  poetry.  It  may 
re-create  the  past,  explain  the  present,  suggest  the  future.  In 
a  word  the  pageant  is  what  our  enthusiasm,  imagination  and  in- 
telligent cooperation  can  make  it ;  it  is,  and  should  be,  the  play- 
thing and  the  playtime  of  the  masses.  A  small  pageant,  to  be 
sure,  may  employ  only  two  hundred  or  three  hundred  people, 
though  a  large  pageant  requires  the  cooperation  of  several  thou- 
sand. But  even  a  small  pageant,  especially  if  given  outdoors, 
may  each  time  be  played  to  from  three  thousand  to  five  thousand 
people. 

Some  of  the  most  successful  pageants  here  and  abroad  have 
been  given  in  the  smaller  places.  Even  fifty  people  may  give  a 
creditable  pageant.  Nor  is  it  true  that  only  places  rich  in  history 
should  attempt  pageantry.  Different  conditions  demand  differ- 
ent pageants ;  that  is  all.  There  is  the  Pageant  of  the  River,  for 
the  river  town  which  is  lacking  in  beauty  or  scanty  in  history; 
there  is  the  Pageant  of  the  Woods  for  the  lumbering  town ;  there 
is  the  Pageant  of  Grain  for  the  farming  community,  the  Pageant 
of  Steel  for  the  manufacturing  town,  and  the  Pageant  of  the 
Mountains  for  the  village  among  the  hills.  Given  imagination 
and  constructive  skill  on  the  part  of  the  maker  of  the  text,  with 
hearty  cooperation  by  all  concerned  in  the  work,  and  any  town 
not  far  distant  from  railroads  or  with  roads  not  too  bad  for 
automobiles  may  have  a  pageant  without  fear  of  going  into  debt. 

It  is  not  true,  then,  that  only  rich  and  large  communities,  or 
those  containing  a  few  citizens  able  to  be  large  guarantors,  may 
attempt  a  pageant.  The  great  desideratum  is  time — not  in  which 
to  prepare  the  actors,  but  in  which  to  make  ready  a  finished  text, 
to  provide  appropriate  costumes  and  to  foresee  all  the  details 
which  provide  for  the  comfort  and  artistic  satisfaction  of  the 
public.  If  possible  some  eight  to  twelve  months  before  a  pageant 
begins,  plans  for  it  should  be  roughed  out  and  committees  or- 
ganized. 

The  text,  which  has  been  gone  over  again  and  again  for  the 
largest  dramatic  effectiveness  in  the  smallest  space,  the  greatest 
clearness  of  meaning  as  a  whole  and  the  largest  effect  of  beauty, 
should  be  ready  in  proof  at  least  a  month  before  rehearsals  begin. 
Thus  the  parts  may  be  learned  without  too  great  a  strain,  and 
changes  which  are  first  seen  to  be  necessary  in  the  rehearsals 


RURAL  DRAMA  245 

may  be  made  in  time  to  allow  an  early  final  printing  of  the  text. 

Costumes  should  be  made  slowly  and  systematically,  either  by 
the  persons  taking  part  or  by  seamstresses  directed  by  some  Mis- 
tress of  the  Robes.  Time  in  this  provides  inexpensively  costumes 
which,  hurriedly  prepared  or  rented  in  quantities,  would  be  both 
less  artistic  and  very  expensive.  A  book  called  "  Festivals  and 
Plays,"  by  P.  Chubb,  contains  many  valuable  suggestions  as  to 
economies  in  such  preparations. 

Time  means,  too,  a  chance  to  work  up  wide  enthusiasm  among 
the  townspeople  and  to  spread  far  and  wide  a  knowledge  of  the 
coming  pageant.  In  the  first  days  of  many  a  pageant  townspeo- 
ple have  said  that  local  history,  costumes  of  the  past,  old  firearms 
and  domestic  utensils  were  lacking.  In  the  last  days  of  prepara- 
tion, however,  costumes,  souvenirs,  relics  have  come  flowing  in 
from  all  sides,  resurrected  from  garrets  and  cellars.  In  one  in- 
stance a  town  that  had  been  strangely  lethargic,  when  urged  by 
an  enterprising  citizen  to  found  a  historical  museum,  took  hold 
of  the  plan  with  vigor  after  its  pageant,  placing  in  the  museum 
many  of  the  costumes,  implements  and  firearms  which  the 
pageant  had  brought  together. 

On  one  other  account  people  of  small  communities  are  some- 
times kept  away  from  pageantry.  "We  are  not  an  artistic  com- 
munity, ' '  they  say.  ' '  They  are  four  or  five  among  us  who  have 
acted  a  little  as  amateurs,  and  still  more  who  sing  well,  but  there 
is  no  widespread,  marked  artistic  ability.  Who  is  to  prepare  our 
text  and  rehearse  the  pageant  ?  Who  are  to  act,  sing  and  dance 
in  it?"  At  first  any  pageant  master  must  be  prepared  to  meet 
in  the  native  American  man  an  ill-concealed  feeling  that  art — 
music,  acting,  painting,  even  singing,  and,  above  all,  dancing — 
is  for  women,  not  for  men.  It  was  certainly  evident  at  first  in 
Peterboro,  New  Hampshire ;  but  as  the  pageant  shaped  itself  be- 
fore those  who  came  somewhat  timidly  to  watch  rehearsals,  those 
who  at  the  outset  lacked  the  interest  or  the  courage  to  take  part 
came  in  one  by  one.  In  the  beginning  it  was  hard  to  find  men 
enough  for  the  necessary  parts.  But  in  the  final  rehearsals  there 
were  enough,  and  among  the  most  enthusiastic  participants  were 
men  who  had  at  first  stood  aloof.  Nc  community  that  has  co- 
operated— men,  women  and  children  of  all  ages — in  producing  a 
local  pageant  will  ever  again  look  down  on  art  as  effeminate- 


246  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

They  will  foster  the  artistic  power  any  one  of  them  may  possess 
and  will  welcome  art  of  all  kinds,  grateful  for  the  uplifting 
pleasure  and  the  beauty  it  brings  into  their  lives.  Again  and 
again  American  pageants,  large  and  small,  have  proved  this  true. 

And  the  artistry  revealed  in  those  who  never  suspected  that 
they  even  possessed  it !  I  remember  one  quiet,  self-contained 
farmer  of  nearly  seventy  who,  though  willingness  itself  to  help 
in  every  way,  bewailed  his  inexperience  and  probable  lack  of  all 
ability.  Even  in  the  first  rehearsal  of  a  scene  arranged  to  illus- 
trate MacDowell's  "Deserted  Farm"  he  caught  exactly  the  re- 
quired spirit  of  delicate,  wistful  pathos.  He  "lived  his  part," 
though  it  had  to  be  expressed  in  the  art  most  difficult  for  the 
inexpressive  New  Englander,  the  art  of  pantomime.  A  hint,  a 
suggestion,  he  took  instantly  and  developed  with  keen  intelli- 
gence. At  the  end  of  the  first  rehearsal,  when  he  came  for  some 
directions,  I  said:  "How  did  you  know  so  quickly  exactly  what 
that  man  should  do  ? " 

"Ah,"  he  said  sadly,  "years  ago  it  was  no  uncommon  thing 
for  me  to  be  saying  'Good-by'  to  old  friends  that  were  going 
westward  to  the  Middle  States  or  California,  and  so  I  just  re- 
membered and  let  go." 

Day  by  day,  filled  with  growing  enthusiasm,  he  came  to  me 
with  illuminating  suggestions  of  business  which  characterized  his 
part.  My  task  was  merely  helping  him  to  express  largely  enough 
for  an  audience  of  a  thousand  people  what  he  felt  perfectly  and 
even  at  the  outset  expressed  adequately  for  those  within  short 
range.  And  his  is  the  story  of  many  men,  women  and  children 
in  all  these  pageants. 

He  is  a  foolish  pageant  master,  indeed,  who  does  not  encourage 
his  actors  to  suggest  business  and  even  lines  for  the  scenes  in 
which  they  take  part.  What  will  come  to  them,  absorbed  as  they 
are  in  their  work,  is  often  far  more  vivid  and  right  than  the 
lines  of  the  author,  no  matter  how  carefully  selected.  One  of 
the  most  effective  details  in  a  Revolutionary  scene  was  entirely 
rephrased  and  infinitely  bettered  by  an  old  man  of  eighty-seven 
playing  a  part.  He  had  never  acted  before.  At  first  he  looked 
on  the  whole  experiment  a  little  doubtfully ;  but,  once  stirred  by 
what  had  meant  so  much  to  his  forebears,  he  quickened  in  imag- 
ination. Enthusiastically  living  the  scene  over  and  over  both  at 


RURAL  DRAMA  247 

rehearsal  and  away  from  it,  lo !  one  day  he  thought  of  lines  far 
more  characterizing  than  those  he  had  originally  been  given. 
Moreover  the  pageant  that  does  not  reveal  unexpected  powers  in 
more  than  one  youth,  and  perhaps  determine  a  later  career,  is 
unusual.  A  pageant  is  to  the  artistic  youth  of  the  community 
a  great  opportunity  for  self-revelation. 

The  most  essential  matters  in  preparing  for  a  pageant  are  text 
and  trainer.  To  handle  a  mixed  crowd  of  several  hundred  men, 
women  and  children  so  as  to  discover  and  reveal  to  them  any  ar- 
tistic power  they  may  possess,  so  as  to  keep  them  contented  and 
even  happy  when  working  hard,  and  so  as  to  get  ultimate  order 
out  of  original  chaos,  may  require  the  trained  hand.  It  is  prob- 
ably safer,  therefore,  to  call  on  somebody  experienced  in  this 
work,  and  to  pay  him  or  her  well.  If,  however,  there  is  any 
man  or  woman  in  the  community  who  feels  competent  to  pro- 
vide the  text  don't  put  that  person  aside  until  an  outline  of 
what  he  or  she  wishes  to  do  has  been  considered  by  the  commit- 
tee, or,  better  still,  passed  on  by  some  person  experienced  in 
pageantry.  If  several  people  prepare  the  text,  rather  than  have 
it  ineffective  let  the  pageant  master  decide  whether  the  scenes 
may  stand  as  written  or  should  be  simply  the  basis  of  a  rework- 
ing by  him  or  some  other  skilled  hand. 

Indeed  writing  pageants  is  not  so  easy  as  many  seem  to  think. 
Given  outdoors  or  in  large  halls  the  pageant  cannot  depend  to 
the  extent  the  play  can  on  the  spoken  word.  Pantomime  of  a 
large,  free  sort,  choral  effects  and  processioning  must  in  many 
instances  replace  the  spoken  word. 

A  pageant  should  as  far  as  possible  have  some  unity  of  idea, 
to  bind  part  with  part  and  to  give  it  meaning  as  a  whole.  Audi- 
ences do  not  like  evenings  of  one-act  plays.  Nor,  in  a  pageant, 
do  they  like  a  dozen  one-act  episodes  of  singing,  dancing  or  act- 
ing. Let  the  early  parts  of  the  pageant  create  interest  for  later 
parts,  arouse  query.  Carry  some  characters  over  from  episode 
to  episode  or  division  to  division ;  contrast  similar  conditions  in 
different  periods.  In  brief,  bind  the  parts  together  all  you  can. 
But  it  is  meaning  as  a  whole  that  a  pageant  most  needs,  for  one 
of  the  great  dangers  of  American  pageantry  to-day  is  commer- 
cialism. Commercialism  means  that  instead  of  writing  a  pag- 
eant for  each  place  growing  out  of  its  peculiar  history,  interests 


248  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

and  traditions,  some  one  stands  ready  with  a  scheme  of  pageantry 
which,  if  slight  adaptations  are  made  in  the  scenes,  may  be  used 
almost  anywhere.  With  this  plan  all  that  is  most  desirable  in- 
stantly disappears,  for  in  pageantry  of  the  right  sort  a  com- 
munity not  altogether  understanding  itself  seeks  to  know  itself 
better,  and  tries  in  self-expressive,  artistic  action  to  review  its 
past,  know  the  meaning  of  its  present  and  appreciate  rightly  the 
latent  beauty  of  its  life. 

An  auditor  leaving  the  pageant  field  or  hall  should  feel  that 
he  understands  as  never  before  the  special  significance  of  the  past 
and  present  life  of  that  town.  The  common  share  of  all  workers 
in  the  inspiration  of  dreams,  that  is  what  the  hearer  should  have 
brought  away.  Individuality,  a  special  meaning  that  grows  out 
of  right  interpretation  of  the  life  of  a  particular  community — 
that,  then,  is  the  great  desideratum  of  the  best  type  of  pageant. 

Is  not,  then,  the  pageant  worth  while  ?  It  spreads  widely  the 
name  and  reputation  of  a  town.  It  brings  trade  to  it.  It  rouses 
and  sustains  civic  pride.  It  reveals  and  develops  artistry.  It 
gives  the  fine  arts  their  right  position  in  the  life  of  the  people. 
Above  all,  it  is  to  the  people  who  share  in  it  a  pleasure  in  the 
doing,  and  a  proud  and  delightful  memory.  When  our  young 
people,  indeed  the  people  of  the  country  at  large,  have  by  popu- 
lar vote  chosen  the  drama  as  our  chief  interest  in  the  fine  arts, 
when  the  great  essential  for  our  proper  growth  in  drama  is  to 
give  our  people  right  standards,  can  there  be  any  question  that 
it  is  wise  to  foster  pageantry  in  this  country  ? 


RURAL  ART  1 

FRANK   A.   WAUGH 

THE  term  is  one  which  is  coming  into  use  in  certain  circles. 
Some  of  the  universities  now  offer  courses  in  rural  art.  The 
present  article  can  hardly  do  more  than  survey  the  field  and 
indicate  the  scope  of  the  subject. 

Art  is,  of  course,  universal,  and  its  principles  are  the  same  in 
the  country  as  in  the  city.  All  we  can  mean  therefore  by  rural 

i  Adapted  from  Business  America,  Feb.,  1914,  pp.   164-167. 


RURAL  ART  249 

art  is  the  application  of  art  principles  to  rural  problems.  When 
we  reach  this  ground,  no  one  can  doubt  that  art  is  able  to  render 
a  service  to  the  country  as  much  as  to  the  city.  Its  purpose  is 
to  bring  order  and  beauty  in  place  of  disorder  and  ugliness. 
Beauty  seems  to  be  more  natural  to  the  country  than  to  the  city, 
and  more  indispensable.  Perhaps  it  would  be  wise  therefore  to 
make  a  stronger  effort  to  preserve  and  enhance  the  beauty  of  the 
country  districts. 

But  the  country  needs  also  to  be  orderly.  An  orderly  arrange- 
ment of  roads,  farms,  fields,  public  grounds,  buildings  and  of  the 
whole  landscape  will  have  considerable  practical  value.  In- 
deed, order,  heaven's  first  law  and  the  foundation  of  art,  has 
also  great  practical  value.  The  ministrations  of  art  may  be  justi- 
fied, therefore,  on  wholly  practical  grounds.  It  is  wise  to  pre- 
sent this  argument  in  most  cases,  though  it  would  be  wrong  to 
make  the  final  test  of  the  service  which  art  would  render  to  the 
country. 

It  will  be  worth  while  to  point  out  in  beginning  that  rural  art 
in  America  is  entirely  different  from  ''peasant  art"  in  the  old 
country.  The  artists  of  the  Old  World  recognize  and  value  very 
highly  what  they  know  as  bauer-kunst.  Perhaps  nothings  would 
differentiate  more  clearly  the  spirit  of  American  country  life 
from  the  spirit  of  Bavarian  peasant  life  than  this  very  difference 
between  American  rural  art  and  bauer-kunst. 

It  seems  to  me  that  rural  art  in  America  ought  to  deal  first 
with  rural  architecture.  Farmhouses  ought  to  be  essentially  and 
typically  rural.  In  the  past  twenty-five  years  we  have  seen 
many  horrible  examples  of  town  houses  built  in  the  country. 
The  architects  have  been  designing  city  houses  almost  exclu- 
sively and  the  only  new  ideas  in  circulation  have  been  developed 
to  meet  urban  conditions.  In  most  instances  they  are  wholly 
unadapted  to  rural  conditions  and  the  results  are  often  genuinely 
grotesque. 

It  should  be  remembered  distinctly  in  this  connection  that  some 
of  the  best  American  domestic  architecture  has  been  developed 
in  the  country.  The  old-fashioned  New  England  farmhouse  and 
the  good  old  Southern  ante-bellum  plantation  house  were  fine 
types.  The  modern  bungalow  in  its  pristine  purity  is  essen- 
tially a  country  house  and  suited  to  certain  types  of  rural  seen- 


250  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

ery.  Unfortunately  it  is  being  badly  misused  by  unskillful  de- 
signers and  badly  misplaced  on  city  streets  amidst  incongruous 
surroundings  so  that  one  has  to  be  very  careful  of  his  admiration 
for  bungalows. 

It  ought  to  be  plain,  however,  that  what  we  want  in  the 
country,  and  especially  on  the  farms,  is  good  country  houses, 
native  to  their  surroundings  and  suited  in  all  respects  to  the  life 
which  goes  on  in  them.  The  same  desire  may  be  freely  expressed 
in  reference  to  all  other  rural  and  semi-rural  buildings,  such  as 
schoolhouses,  country  churches,  country  libraries,  village  stores, 
etc.  For  the  most  part  these  buildings  also  are  copied  from  city 
models  and  the  results  are  depressing.  There  have  been  built  in 
all  parts  of  the  country  a  number  of  fine  examples  in  recent 
times  to  show  what  can  be  done  in  the  way  of  country  banks, 
schoolhouses,  stores,  etc.,  and  these  models  ought  to  be  followed. 

The  improvement  of  farmyards  is  always  spoken  of  in  connec- 
tion with  rural  art,  and  frequently  as  though  it  were  the  main 
issue.  Farmyards  ought,  doubtless,  to  be  embellished  and  made 
attractive  everywhere,  but  it  seems  preposterous  to  be  planting 
Hydrangea  paniculata  grandiflora  in  the  front  yard  while  the 
kitchen  sink  drains  into  the  well.  In  other  words,  the  problems 
of  mere  ornamentation  ought  to  be  the  last  to  be  taken  up,  rather 
than  the  first.  In  this  work  simple,  clean  arrangement,  tidiness 
and  good  order,  are  worth  a  great  deal  more  than  flower  beds  and 
shrubbery.  The  special  value  of  good  shade  trees,  however, 
should  not  be  overlooked. 

The  proper  application  of  art  to  the  planning  of  the  farm  would 
reach  far  beyond  the  front  yard.  Every  farm  needs  to  be 
planned  as  a  whole.  Different  fields  and  buildings  should  be  ar- 
ranged in  a  logical  system,  in  proper  relation  to  one  another. 
This  is  essentially  an  art  problem,  and  unless  rural  art  can  help 
in  its  solution,  it  has  failed  at  an  important  point. 

Landscape  gardening,  which  deals  with  all  these  subjects,  has 
in  recent  years  developed  on  a  large  scale  a  special  branch  of 
study  known  as  civic  art.  Like  every  other  line  of  human  en- 
deavor this  has  been  carried  farthest  in  urban  civilization, — in  its 
application  to  cities ;  but  it  has  its  equally  important  applications 
in  the  country.  Rural  civic  art  simply  means  the  application  of 
art  principles  to  all  the  public  affairs  in  the  country.  The  most 


RURAL  ART  251 

important  of  these  are  (a)  roads  and  streets,  including  bridges, 
street  railways  and  street  trees;  (b)  all  public  grounds  such  as 
parks,  picnic  grounds,  commons,  lakes,  water  fronts,  school 
grounds,  cemeteries;  (c)  all  public  and  semi-public  buildings  such 
as  schoolhouses,  libraries,  churches;  (d)  public  recreation  facili- 
ties, especially  playgrounds;  (e)  all  public  service  utilities,  such 
as  telephone  lines,  electric  light  lines,  railway  stations  and  station 
grounds.  All  these  items  of  the  material  equipment  of  the  coun- 
try should  be  improved  in  beauty  and  in  usefulness.  Such  civic 
improvement  is  greatly  to  be  desired  in  the  county  as  well  as  in 
the  city  and  constitutes  one  of  the  large  fields  of  rural  art. 

As  art  deals  essentially  with  what  is  beautiful,  rural  art  strives 
to  conserve  and  increase  the  stock  of  rural  beauty  on  every  hand. 
It  is  easy  to  see  that  there  is  a  great  deal  of  beauty  in  the  coun- 
try and  to  determine  what  some  of  the  main  features  are.  For 
example,  the  country  roads  are  extremely  beautiful.  They  are 
in  a  good  and  important  sense  the  best  kind  of  public  parks. 
Everybody  enjoys  them  whether  a-foot  or  driving,  or  even  tour- 
ing in  an  automobile  (though  this  last  is  the  poorest  way  of  all). 
Much  can  be  done  to  preserve  and  even  develop  the  beauty  of  the 
country  roads.  It  hardly  needs  to  be  added  that  very  little  has 
thus  far  been  done.  Any  local  improvement  organization  could 
hardly  attempt  a  better  line  of  work  or  one  in  which  success  is 
more  likely  than  in  this  line  of  preserving  the  beauties  of  the 
country  lanes.  These  country  roads  are  beautiful  for  their  trees 
and  for  the  wild  shrubbery  and  ferns  and  flowers  which  border 
them.  Such  native  growth,  within  reason,  ought  to  be  preserved ; 
and  it  would  be  an  excellent  plan  t6  use  favorable  strips  of  coun- 
try road  as  special  preserves  for  wild  plants.  There  are  many 
parts  of  the  country,  especially  where  agriculture  is  highly  suc- 
cessful, where  the  wild  plants  are  in  imminent  danger  of  extinc- 
tion. Hundreds  of  the  native  species  are  already  almost  eradi- 
cated. No  better  public  place  could  be  found  for  making  a  col- 
lection of  these  for  general  instruction  and  enjoyment  than  along 
suitable  strips  of  country  road. 

Many  persons  are  also  giving  serious  thought  to  the  preserva- 
tion of  native  birds,  fish  and  small  animals.  To  some  extent 
these  objects  can  be  accomplished,  especially  the  protection  of  the 
birds,  in  connection  with  these  roadside  plant  preserves. 


252  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

One  of  the  crying  evils  of  modern  country  life  is  the  rapid  re- 
moval from  general  use  of  all  streams,  stream  banks,  lakes,  lake 
shores,  forests  and  hills.  Within  the  memory  of  all  elderly  peo- 
ple such  sources  of  recreation  were  open  freely  to  the  world. 
Every  boy  could  hunt,  swim  and  fish  where  he  liked ;  and  all  peo- 
ple, old  and  young,  held  their  picnics  on  the  river  banks  or  went 
boating  on  the  lakes  as  they  pleased.  All  this  property  is  now 
being  rapidly  taken  up  by  private  owners  and  common  people 
stringently  excluded.  The  only  way  to  preserve  any  of  these 
ancient  and  highly  valuable  rights  to  future  generations  is  to 
have  them  taken  very  soon  under  public  control.  All  these 
ponds,  lakes,  streams,  hills,  forests,  or  at  least  the  best  of  them, 
ought  to  be  free  for  the  public  use  forever;  and  it  is  the  most 
immediate  and  important  work  of  rural  civic  art  to  secure  these 
reservations.  Of  course  after  the  public  has  secured  title  to  such 
properties,  their  various  beauties  and  utilities  remain  to  be  de- 
veloped. Such  development  will  be  the  natural  field  before  long 
of  rural  art. 

Aside  from  these  park  reservations  to  which  the  public  should 
hold  a  legal  title  there  is  a  much  larger  sum  total  of  beautiful 
rural  scenery  which  the  public  does  not  need  to  own,  but  which 
everybody  can  enjoy.  This  scenery  does  not  need  to  be  neglected 
simply  because  it  is  owned  by  private  individuals  and  exploited 
as  farms  or  forests.  Every  wise  community  will  appreciate  its 
resources  of  beautiful  landscape  and  will  make  the  most  of  them. 

The  final  test  of  rural  art  must  be  a  love  of  rural  beauty.  If 
people  will  not  see  the  beauty  of  the  country,  especially  those 
people  who  live  in  it,  it  is  useless  to  talk  to  them  of  art  in  any 
other  form.  There  are  many  ways  in  which  this  appreciation 
of  the  country  beautiful  may  be  developed.  It  may  even  be 
taught  in  the  schools.  It  is  quite  as  easy  to  convince  one  of  the 
beauty  of  native  trees  or  of  the  neighborly  hills  or  the  local  lake 
as  of  the  Sistine  Madonna,  or  the  Hermes  of  Praxiteles,  which 
most  of  us  never  saw.  Genuine,  thoroughly  organized  campaigns 
for  the  appreciation  of  local  scenery  would  do  more  for  many 
communities  than  organized  efforts  to  produce  more  corn. 


RURAL  RECREATION  253 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Arvold,  Alfred  G.     Soul  and  the  Soil.     Playground,  10 :  324-33,  Decem- 
ber,'1910. 

Bailey,   L.    H.     The    Playground    in    Farming    Communities.     In    his 
York  State  Rural  Problems,  1:70-78,  Lyon,  Albany,  N.  Y.,  1913. 

Bancroft,  Jessie  H.     Games  for  the  Playground,  Home,   School,  and 

Gymnasium.     Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1909. 

Children's  Games  and  Rules  for  Playing.     (With  Crampton,  C.  W. 
and  others)  Amer.  Sports  Pub.  Co.,  N.  Y.,  1916. 

Buttertield,  K.  L.     Play  and  Recreation  in  Our  Country  Life.     Rural 
Manhood,  3 : 147-150,  May,  1912.     Intl.  Committee  Y.  M.  C.  A., 

Clarke,  Ida   Clyde.     The   Community  Drama.     In  The  Little  Democ- 
racy, Chapter  13,  and  Community  Music,  Chapter  12.     D.  Appleton 

&  Co.,  N.  Y.,  1918. 

Community  Music.     The  Playground,  Vol.  8;  139-142,  1914-1915. 
Curtis,  Henry  S.     Play  and  Recreation.     Ginn,  N.  Y.,  1914. 
Dykema,  Peter  W.     Community  Music  and  the  Spirit  of  Democracy, 

The  Playground,  10 :  368-376,  Jan.,  1919. 

Spread  of  Community  Music  Idea.     Annals,  67:  218-223,  Sept.,  1916. 
Farwell,  Arthur.     Community  Music  Drama.     Craftsman,  26 :  418-424, 

1914. 
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19 :  825-834,  May,  1914. 
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2 : 139-142,  May,  1911. 
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N.  Y.,  1907. 
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CHAPTER  X 

COMMUNICATION  AND  TRANSPORTATION 
THE  FUTURE  OF  GOOD  ROADS  IN  STATE  AND  NATION  1 

EDWIN   A.    STEVENS 

IN  no  country  has  the  growth  of  the  highway  problem  in  im- 
portance and  in  difficulties  been  greater  than  in  the  United  States, 
and  in  none  does  it  seem  likely  to  -be  greater  in  the  future.  Our 
motor- vehicle  registry  is  already  the  largest  in  the  world. 

The  effect  of  these  industrial  phenomena  on  our  roads  is 
worthy  of  most  careful  thought.  The  problem  in  its  most  simple 
and  general  statement  is  one  of  transportation.  The  cost  of 
transporting  one  ton  a  mile  at  any  given  speed  will  divide  itself 
naturally  into  two  parts :  first,  the  cost  of  providing  and  running 
the  vehicle,  in-eluding  up-keep,  fuel,  and  lubricants ;  second,  the 
cost  of  providing  and  maintaining  the  roadway  in  such  shape 
that  the  sum  of  both  parts  of  the  cost  of  transportation  shall  be 
a  minimum.  The  latter  is  the  special  province  of  highway  ad- 
ministration. To  discharge  this  duty,  provision  must  be  made 
for  the  future  traffic. 

To  do  this  intelligently  we  must  form  some  idea  of  the  traffic 
of  to-day  and  of  its  past  growth.  The  horse-drawn  traffic  is  prac- 
tically unknown  ;  it  will  probably  not  show  any  material  increase, 
though,  in  the  minds  of  many  authorities,  it  is  not  likely  to  de- 
crease. It  is  also  less  trying  on  our  road  surfaces.  The  following 
statistics  as  to  automobile  registration  in  ten  States  that  have 
undertaken  the  systematic  improvement  of  their  roads  affords 
us  a  means  of  foretelling  what  is  to  be  expected  within  the  next 
few  years  for  the  nation : 

i  Adapted  from  Berliner's  magazine  59:  181-190,  Feb.,  1916,  copyright, 
1916,  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 

255 


256 


RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


MOTOR-VEHICLE    REGISTRATION    AND    POPULATION 


State 

1911 

1914 

Esti- 
mated, 
1915 

Popula- 
tion, 
1915 

Inhabit 
ants  per 
motor 
vehicle. 
1915 

*  Motoi 
vehicles 
1918 

Motor 
vehicles 
1919 

Popula- 
tion, 
1919 

Inhabit- 
ants per 
motor 
vehicle, 
1919 

Mass.     ... 
R.    I  
Conn.     .  . 
New    York 

N     T 

38,907 
7,262 
16.372 
83.969 
55,913 
48,108 
7  ^1' 
4  020 
45.788 
42,615 

77,246 
13.530 
32,790 
168.428 
70,910 
125.189 
20.238 
13.984 
122.504 
145,992 

99,000 
15,600 
39.000 
222.000 
91,500 
180,000 
33.000 
22.000 
184.000 
190,000 

3,700,000 
618.000 
1,235,000 
10,300,000 
2.960,000 
8,500.000 
1.350,000 
2.180  000 
5.100,000 
6,100.000 

37.4 
39.6 
31.6 
46.4 
32.4 
47.2 
40.9 
99. 
27.7 
32.1 

J39 

193,497 
30,595 
84.902 
457^924 
154,870 
393.972 
78,146 
72.228 
417.400 
389.135 

250,800 
42,000 
105,419 
600,000 
192,000 
414,485 
104,353 
94,100 
511,500 
478.450 

3,889,607 
648,964 
1.307,163 
10.833,795 
3,936,091 
8,936,091 
1,395,405 
2,255.036 
5.335,543 
6.400.473 

15.5 
15.5 
12.4 
18. 
16.4 
21.7 
13.3 
23.9 
10.4 
133 

Jlfil 

Penn.     .  . 
Md  

Virginia 
Ohio    
Illinois     . 

Totals 

350,227 

790,811 

1.076,100 

42,043.000 

2,272,669 

2.793.107 

44.937,168 

See  Editor's  note. 


t  Average 


(Mr.  Stevens'  table  brought  the  figures  to  1915  only.  The  motor-vehicle 
registration  for  1018  and  1019  is  added  from  a  recent  count  by  the  B.  F. 
Coodrich  Rubber  Co.,  based  on  official  figures  from  every  State.  It  ex- 
cludes dealer  and  motorcycle  registrations.  The  population  by  States  is 
taken  from  the  World  Almanac  for  1920.  According  to  the  Goodrich 
count  the  total  motor-vehicle  registrations  for  the  United  States  for  1910 
was  7,555,269,  or  one  for  every  14.2  inhabitants.  This  greatly  exceeds 
Mr.  Stevens'  estimate. — ED.) 

If  the  average  life  of  a  car  be  three  years,  it  seems  possible 
that  by  1920  we  shall  have  on  our  highways  a  total  of  not  less 
than  6,000,000  motor-vehicles,  or  one  for  every  twenty  in- 
habitants. This  is  about  three  times  our  present  registration. 

To  care  for  this  traffic  we  have  in  the  United  States  about 
2,125,000  miles  of  country  roads,  not  counting  streets.  What 
mileage  has  been  "improved"  it  is  impossible  to  say,  for  the  word 
has  no  standard  meaning.  We  are  probably  safe  in  assuming 
that  for  a  satisfactory  system  not  less  than  1,250,000  miles  of 
road  must  still  be  improved.  With  the  ever-growing  traffic  and 
with  the  consequent  demand  for  better  construction,  the  ultimate 
cost  of  this  system  will  not  fall  short  of  $10,000,000,000,  and  its 
construction  will  probably  cover  a  period  of  not  less  than  forty 
years.  These  figures  do  not  overstate  the  case.  Many  roads  have 
been  and  will  be  built  too  narrow,  too  crooked,  with  excessive 
grades  and  inadequate  pavements.  These  should  be  widened, 
straightened,  regraded,  and  repaved.  They  will  also  have  to  be 
provided  with  bridges  designed  for  the  increasing  weight  of 
vehicles.  However  this  may  be,  it  seems  safe  to  say  that  we  have 


COMMUNICATION  AND  TRANSPORTATION  257 

a  big  job  on  our  hands,  and  that  if  we  are  to  plan  for  its  execution 
we  must  do  so  in  a  big  way. 

Let  us  consider  the  full  extent  of  the  problem — what  we  are 
now  doing  to  solve  it  and  what  is  needed  to  obtain  good  roads. 

Assuming  for  a  moment  that  in  1920  we  shall  have  6,000,000 
motor-vehicles  and  6,000,000  teams  using  our  roads,  that  the 
motors  will  average  200  days  at  thirty  miles  and  the  teams  180 
days  at  fifteen  miles,  we  have  totals  of  36,000,000,000  motor- 
vehicle  miles  and  16,200,000,000  team  miles.  The  difference  in 
cost  of  operation  on  an  improved  as  against  an  unimproved  road 
may  be  safely  put  at  not  less  than  six  cents  per  mile  for  both 
motor  and  teams.  On  this  basis  we  would  have  52,200,000,000 
vehicle  miles  at  six  cents,  or  $3,120,000,000— the  total  yearly 
saving. 

I  need  only  allude  to  the  other  gains  due  to  good  roads — 
the  opening  up  of  the  country,  the  development  of  industries, 
the  improvement  of  the  conditions  of  agricultural  life.  These 
cannot  be  readily  estimated  in  figures,  but  the  value  is  certainly 
not  less  than  the  reduction  in  cost  of  haulage  and  probably  ex- 
ceeds it  manyfold. 

The  importance  of  the  interests  involved  would  seem  to  war- 
rant the  expense  of  scientific  and  businesslike  administration. 
Such  administration  we  lack ;  we  seem  to  have  formed  but  a  faint 
idea  of  our  woful  state  of  unpreparedness  and  of  the  seriousness 
of  the  results.  Our  present  methods  of  road  administration  are 
inadequate. 

While  most  of  the  States  have  preserved  the  common-law  doc- 
trine of  the  king's  highway,  the  treatment  accorded  to  our  roads 
has  not  matched  the  dignity  of  their  title.  Generally,  the  roads, 
except  in  the  case  of  city  streets,  are  in  the  hands  of  some  local 
body  or  of  a  turnpike  company.  The  care  they  have  received 
is  such  as  might  have  been  expected  in  a  community  descended 
from  pioneer  ancestry.  The  traditions  still  survive  of  the  days 
when  each  man  raised  his  own  food,  built  his  own  house,  and 
looked  to  no  policeman  to  enforce  his  rights.  Any  man,  in  those 
days,  was  supposed  to  be  able  to  build  and  keep  a  road,  and  this 
belief  is  by  no  means  dead.  It  shows  itself  in  the  underlying 
idea  of  our  road  administration,  the  turning  over  to  township 
committees,  selectmen,  or  by  whatever  name  they  may  be  known, 


258  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  management  of  the  greater  part  of  our  road  systems.  In 
most  of  our  States  we  have  placed  bridges  under  the  care  of 
somebody  other  than  that  in  charge  of  the  road. 

On  this  substructure  many  of  the  States  have  built,  each  in  its 
own  way  to  provide  for  our  increasing  highway  traffic.  The 
laws  passed  for  this  object  may  be  grouped  into  two  general 
classes,  following  the  lead  set  by  the  two  States  that  first  .took 
up  road  improvement  as  a  field  for  State  activity,  namely,  New 
Jersey  and  Massachusetts.  The  former  undertook  to  aid  counties 
in  the  building  of  improved  roads,  leaving  the  care  of  the  roads 
thus  built  to  the  county  authorities ;  Massachusetts,  on  the  other 
hand,  set  herself  to  building  and  maintaining  a  system  of  State 
roads  made  up  of  the  most  important  through  lines  of  traffic. 
Both  of  these  represent  correct  principles.  The  State  should 
care  for  the  important  through  lines.  Local  bodies  should  be 
encouraged  to  improve  roads  of  secondary  importance.  Neither 
of  these  States,  however,  undertook  to  thoroughly  provide  for  the 
proper  care  of  all  of  its  country  roads,  nor,  as  far  as  I  know,  has 
any  other  State.  Nothing  less  than  this  will  meet  the  need. 
Every  public  road  should  be  insured  such  intelligent  care  as  to 
furnish  the  best  service  of  which  it  is  capable. 

My  own  experience  as  a  road  official  may  be  enlightening.  A 
mechanical  engineer  by  training,  with  scanty  knowledge  of  road- 
work  and  even  less  experience  in  public  office,  I  was  appointed 
five  years  ago  head  of  the  New  Jersey  Road  Department.  The 
appointment,  I  believe,  was  considered  a  good  one. 

I  expected  to  find  very  simple  engineering,  an  ill-organized 
repair  system,  and  more  or  less  * '  graft. ' '  I  found  the  engineer- 
ing by  no  means  simple,  that  proper  reorganization  of  the  repair 
system  would  require  voluntary  cooperation  and  acceptance  of 
State  control  by  the  counties,  many  of  which  were  jealous  of 
each  other  and  of  the  influence  of  the  department.  I  found  no 
legal  evidence  of  "graft"  and  no  reason  for  suspicion  against 
the  force  under  my  control.  This  force  had  been  formed  and 
had  worked  under  department  heads  not  one  of  whom  had  any 
previous  engineering  experience ;  it  was  personally  well  fitted  for 
its  work,  but  hardly  large  enough  for  its  statutory  duties  and 
utterly  insufficient  for  the  work  necessary  to  insure  thoroughness. 
There  was  much  duplication  of  work  between  the  State  and 


COMMUNICATION  AND  TRANSPORTATION  259 

county  forces  and  ill-located  responsibility.  While  I  cannot 
complain  of  any  lack  of  good  will,  the  work  has  been  and  is  being 
done  under  conditions  that  exclude  any  high  standard  of  attain- 
ment and  with  the  knowledge  that  no  one  expects  results  to 
measure  up  to  any  such  standard. 

I  may  be  slow-witted.  I.have  had  to  waste  much  time  in  plan- 
ning how  to  get  the  work  done  under  legislation  both  unreason- 
ably restrictive  and  often  inconsistent  and  in  learning  to  tie  the 
red  tape  thereby  required  into  the  regulation  bow-knots. 

During  my  term  of  office  almost  every  one  of  our  neighboring 
States  has  changed  the  head  of  its  road  department.  This  brings 
us  to  a  most  serious  defect -of  our  road  administration,  namely, 
that  the  head,  whether  a  commissioner  or  a  board,  is  a  political 
appointee,  usually  unskilled  in  road-work  and  frequently  without 
any  engineering  training.  Holding  office  for  a  term  of  years, 
subjected  to  great  political  pressure,  and  intrusted  with  wide 
powers,  it  would,  indeed,  be  wonderful  if  these  men  did  not 
frequently  yield  to  considerations  other  than  the  best  interests  of 
our  roads  and  err  by  dabbling  in  engineering  matters. 

Instead  of  appreciation  of  the  seriousness  and  the  needs  of  the 
situation,  one  generally  finds  in  our  legislatures  a  faith  in  the 
efficacy  of  certain  pet  remedies  and  a  leaning  to  numerous  checks, 
safeguards,  and  investigations,  the  outgrowth  of  lack  of  con- 
fidence in  the  road  administration,  fruitful  sources  of  delay,  red 
tape,  and  waste,  and  godsends  for  the  muckraker. 

I  have  said  that  European  experience  is  of  but  limited  value 
to  us  in  the  solution  of  our  problem.  The  weight  given  in 
Europe  to  the  administration  of  their  roads  is,  however,  in- 
structive. The  French  Republic  has  been  the  classic  example 
of  road  administration.  It  compares  with  our  ten  States  as 
follows,  the  French  motor-vehicle  figures  being  for  the  period 
before  the  great  war : 


Road 
mileage 

Area 

Population 

Motor- 
vehicles 

France     
Ten  States   

357,000 
457,000 

207,000 
261,000 

40,000,000 
42,000,000 

122,000 
1,070,000 

In  France  all  national  roads  and  most  of  the  departmental 
roads  are  under  the  care  of  the  celebrated  ''Fonts  et  Chausees" 


260  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

corps.  This  corps  is  the  best  and  most  thoroughly  trained  body 
of  civil  engineers  in  the  world.  Their  men  are  especially  trained 
for  the  work  from  boyhood,  as  are  cadets  and  midshipmen. 
Their  life-work  is  in  the  corps.  Their  instruction  covers  the 
engineering,  the  administrative  detail,  and  the  law  referring  to 
the  subject.  The  standing  of  the  corps  personally  and  profes- 
sionally is  of  the  highest. 

Contrast  for  a  moment  our  conditions.  There  is  no  legal 
standard  of  qualifications  for  an  engineer,  least  of  all  a  highway 
engineer.  The  job  is  seldom  permanent.  There  is  but  little 
confidence  in  the  ability  and  but  too  often  in  the  integrity  of 
highway  officials.  This  is  hardly  to  be  wondered  at  when  we 
recall  that  we  are  trying  to  care  for  a  fast-growing  motor  traffic, 
to-day  sixteen  times  that  of  the  French  Republic,  under  the 
leadership  of  political  appointees  holding  office  for  limited  terms 
and  working  under  ?aws  that  make  efficiency  impossible. 

To  avoid  any  misunderstanding  as  to  our  highway  engineers, 
let  me,  in  this  connection,  bear  witness  to  the  devotion  and 
ability  of  those  with  whom  I  have  been  thrown  in  contact.  There 
are,  of  course,  lamentable  exceptions,  but  as  a  whole  they  are 
morally  and  technically  of  higher  class  than  one  would  expect 
under  the  conditions.  There  is,  however,  little  organization,  no 
recognized  standard  of  qualifications,  and  practically  no  inter- 
state cooperation.  Road  societies  there  are,  but  these  are  or- 
ganized to  " boost"  the  cause  of  roads  and  only  incidentally  to 
afford  technical  training  and  interchange  of  data. 

The  very  evident  cure  for  our  present  evils  and  the  best  pro- 
vision for  the  future  is  such  legislation  as  will  establish  in  each 
State  a  highway  force  that  will  command  respect  and  confidence 
in  its  ability.  We  must  then  state  our  problem,  and  this,  too, 
will  generally  require  legislation.  Even  in  the  smallest  and  in 
the  sparsely  settled  States  the  cost  and  importance  of  .the  work 
will  warrant  thorough  preparatory  study.  But  little  of  this 
has  been  done.  ~,Ve  have  tackled  the  job  of  improving  our  roads 
with  an  insouciance  that  would  be  almost  laughable  if  its  results 
were  less  ominous.  Few,  if  any,  States  have  any  accurate  idea 
of  their  country-road  mileage,  much  less  of  its  proper  and 
economical  development,  and,  I  may  add,  practically  none  at  all 
of  the  ultimate  cost  nor  of  the  duration  of  the  period  of  improve- 


COMMUNICATION  AND  TRANSPORTATION  261 

ment.  Yet  all  these  can  at  least  be  approximately  ascertained, 
and  the  public  which  pays  the  bill  is  entitled  to  the  information. 

For  this  purpose  we  should  lay  out  a  road  system  for  each 
State.  Such  a  system  will  include  roads  of  all  classes.  If 
national  roads  become  a  fact  they  will  form  a  separate  class. 
There  will  also  be  the  main  lines  of  intra-State  traffic,  then  roads 
of  secondary  importance  furnishing  the  principal  feeder  lines 
for  the  State  highways  and  connecting  towns  of  secondary  im- 
portance, and,  lastly,  the  lesser  roads  corresponding  to  the  capil- 
laries in  the  system  of  blood  circulation.  Each  of  these  classes 
will  call  for  different  features  of  design  and  for  different  types 
of  paving.  For  our  greatest  roads  it  would  seem  that  the  best 
will  be  none  too  good,  for  the  smallest  our  means  will  demand 
that  we  adopt  the  most  economical  construction.  Without 
thorough  preliminary  study  and  planning  we  shall,  beyond  doubt, 
build  roads,  some  insufficient  for  their  loads  and  others  more 
costly  than  their  traffic  will  warrant.  I  may  here  point  out  that 
the  permanent  investment  in  a  road  is  made  up  of  the  cost  of 
the  right  of  way  and  of  grading.  Drainage  works  and  founda- 
tion courses  may  be  or  may  not  be  permanent ;  the  same  is  true 
of  bridges;  but  surfaces  are  never  permanent.  If,  however,  we 
secure  enough  land  and  grade  it  properly  at  the  outset,  our  in- 
vestment to  that  extent  is  secure. 

Our  legislation  should  extend  to  all  country  roads.  Streets 
present  another  problem.  Just  as  physically  and  commercially 
all  roads  in  a  State  form  part  of  one  system,  so  the  State  must 
provide  that  they  be  administered  under  uniform  laws  and  in 
coordination.  The  public  has  a  right  to  expect  and  the  State 
should  provide  that  every  road  be  so  kept  as  to  give  the  best 
service  of  which  it  is  capable. 

There  must  be  a  strict,  uniform,  and  scientific  system  of  ac- 
counting and  audit,  including  an  accurate  census  of  road  traffic. 
The  resulting  data  must  be  carefully  analyzed  to  enable  those 
in  charge  not  only  to  make  comparisons  but  also  clearly  to  account 
for  the  discharge  of  the  trust  imposed  on  them. 

We  must,  in  all  cases,  have  such  elasticity  in  statutory  provi- 
sions as  will  cut  the  red  tape  down  to  a  minimum. 

The  importance  of  the  work  to  be  done  will  justify  provisions 
that  will  make  highway^  engineering  a  career  that  will  attract 


262  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

and  hold  young  men  of  ability  and  energy.  Material  of  this 
character  can  be  trained  to  high  efficiency  if  politics  be  excluded, 
if  promotion  follow  on  proven  fitness  and  discipline  be  rigidly 
enforced. 

Road-work  calls  for  analytical  study  requiring  the  combination 
of  experience,  common  sense,  and  technical  training.  It  involves 
also,  in  the  higher  grades,  difficult  administrative  work,  which 
cannot  be  readily  separated  from  the  engineering  and  executive 
ability  of  no  mean  order.  This  always  demands  and  must  receive 
good  pay.  A  high  professional  standard  for  such  a  force  gives 
the  members  a  pride  in  their  organization  and  a  confidence  in 
its  ability  to  do  its  work,  without  which  it  is  useless  to  expect 
any  full  measure  of  success  or  of  public  trust.  This  latter,  I 
repeat  again,  is  essential  to  any  satisfactory  solution  of  our  prob- 
lem. Without  it  the  public  will  not  insist  on  the  exclusion  of 
politics  from  road-work,  and  before  they  will  so  insist  the  people 
must  know  that  their  business  is  being  handled  by  experts  and 
honest  men. 

The  technical  work  to  be  performed  by  such  a  body  should 
consist,  in  addition  to  the  preliminary  study  needed  for  the  laying 
out  of  road  systems,  of  design,  construction,  and  maintenance. 

"Safety  first,"  of  which  we  have  heard  much  of  late,  needed 
but  little  consideration  in  the  road  design  of  the  ante-automobile 
age.  Any  road  was  safe  enough  if  it  was  good  enough.  Guard- 
rails on  high  embankments,  avoidance  of  sharp  turns  at  the  foot 
of  steep  grades,  and  a  little  care  at  approaches  to  bridges  were 
enough  to  make  a  road  reasonably  safe  at  the  speed  and  weights 
for  which  they  were  designed,  say  ten  miles  an  hour  and  about 
three  tons.  It  is  no  wonder  that  they  have  become  * '  death-traps ' ' 
when  called  on  to  carry  traffic  at  forty  miles  with  maximum  loads 
of  from  twelve  to  fifteen  tons.  The  solution  of  the  guard-rail 
question  is  yet  open.  Any  obstruction  to  the  view  within  a 
distance  of  from  350  to  400  feet  is  highly  dangerous.  Curves  on 
or  at  the  lower  end  of  steep  grades,  narrowness,  excessive  crown, 
unprotected  ditches,  badly  placed  trees  or  poles,  and  even  the 
pipes  often  used  to  carry  water  across  entrances,  have  become 
dangers  that  are  taking  a  heavy  toll  of  human  life. 

The  most  apparent  dangers  on  our  highways  are  the  crossings 
over  railroad  and  trolley  tracks  at  grade.  The  elimination  of 


COMMUNICATION  AND  TRANSPORTATION  263 

these  death-traps  should  never  be  overlooked.  The  cost  of  this 
work  will  form  no  small  part  of  our  future  highway  disburse- 
ments. Even  when  elimination  is  impossible,  much  may  be  done 
to  decrease  danger  at  crossings. 

As  to  pavements,  for  minor  roads  this  will  always  depend  on 
the  relative  costs  of  locally  available  materials.  Gravel,  oyster- 
shells,  and  macadam  will  probably  always  be  able  to  provide  for  a 
considerable  mileage  of  the  lesser  roads.  Macadam  with  a 
blanket  coat  of  tar  or  asphalt,  well  maintained,  will  carry  a  con- 
siderable traffic,  but  only  at  a  fairly  high  maintenance  cost.  For 
more  important  roads  Portland  cement  concrete  and  bitumi- 
nous concretes  seem  the  most  promising  solution.  Block  pave- 
ments, brick,  wood,  asphalt  block,  and  granite  on  a  concrete  base 
will  be  required  for  the  heaviest  traffic  and  for  such  grades  on 
bituminous  concrete  roads  as  may  be  found  too  steep  for  that 
material. 

Roads  must  be  designed  for  the  speed  and  weights  that  will 
be  used  on  them.  Whether  there  be  a  statutory  speed  limit  or 
not,  it  is  not  seriously  regarded  and  will  in  time  probably  dis- 
appear. Any  prudent  designer  to-day  will  count  on  not  less 
than  forty  miles.  There  is  little  use  in  providing  a  surface  suited 
for  such  a  speed  without  giving  the  corresponding  widths  and 
curvatures.  Without  knowledge  of  weights  to  be  carried,  bridge 
design  is  but  guesswork.  Pavements  and  foundation  courses 
must  be  suited  to  the  weights  to  be  carried.  These  should  be 
regulated  by  legislation  uniform  in  all  the  States.  The  paved 
way  for  important  roads  should  not  be  less  than  eighteen  feet  on 
tangents ;  curves  should  have  radii  of  not  less  than  1,000  feet  with 
increased  widths  of  paved  surface. 

Grades  -are  a  matter  of  both  economy  and  safety;  with 
Bituminous  surfaces  anything  in  excess  of  five  per  cent,  becomes 
too  slippery  for  horses ;  automobiles  also  skid  dangerously  thereon. 

Many  of  the  minor  appurtenances  of  our  roads  deserve  and 
should  receive  more  thorough  study  than  has  generally  been 
given  them.  Road  signs,  for  example,  should  be  legible  from 
whatever  side  approached.  Running  beyond  a  sign  before  being 
able  to  read  it  destroys,  to  a  great  extent,  its  usefulness  and  is  a 
source  of  actual  danger.  Dust  in  excessive  quantities  is  not  only 
a  nuisance,  but  has  become  a  serious  danger. 


264  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  correct  placing  of  shade-trees  and  the  selection  of  the 
species  used  are  matters  of  importance.  Trees  must  not  be  placed 
so  near  the  driveway  as  to  be  dangerous.  The  same  is  true  of 
telegraph-poles,  sign-posts,  etc. 

The  military  features  of  our  roads  have  been  all  but  entirely 
overlooked.  A  few  years  ago  a  request  for  the  vie'ws  and  advice 
of  the  War  Department  met  with  a  polite  but  entirely  unenlight- 
ening  answer.  Strategically,  roads  must  connect  points  of  mili- 
tary importance.  Tactically,  they  must  be  designed  to  carry 
necessary  military  traffic.  In  the  light  of  the  experience  of  the 
great  war,  this  means  that  very  heavy  loads,  guns  of  six  and  eight 
inch  caliber,  heavy  motor-trucks,  high-speed  cars,  cavalry  and 
infantry  must  be  accommodated.  Less  than  three  lines  of  traffic 
will  hardly  meet  the  requirements.  Nothing  less  than  thirty  feet 
of  graded  width  will  do.  Bridges  must  also  be  strengthened.  It 
may  well  be  that  screening  will  be  required. 

The  designer  must  also  carefully  weigh  the  advantages  of  any 
proposed  feature  of  design  against  its  cost.  He  must  bear  in 
mind  that  the  total  road  cost  is  divided  into  three  parts :  interest 
on  the  first  cost;  depreciation  and  up-keep,  including  the  over- 
head charges  due  to  administration,  use  of  machinery,  and,  what 
is  usually  called  the  repair  charge,  the  cost  of  the  actual  labor 
and  materials  used  in  repair.  What  he  now  has  in  most  cases 
is  the  repair  charge  only  and  that  without  traffic  data.  This 
charge  may  be  easily  kept  low  by  an  expensive  construction.  It 
may  well  be  that  a  low-priced  road  with  comparatively  high  re- 
pair charge  will  be  the  cheapest  solution.  Yet,  on  the  other 
hand,  too  cheap  a  construction  is  sure  to  prove  wasteful.  It  can 
easily  be  imagined  that  the  designer  has  ample  field  in  which  to 
show  his  ability. 

We  have  generally  built  good  roads  as  far  as  construction  work 
is  concerned.  We  have  probably  -been  a  little  too  impatient  for 
results  and  too  easy-going  to  obtain  all  the  accuracy  in  following 
a  specification  that  we  find  abroad.  Our  inspection,  too,  in  many 
cases,  may  have  lacked  in  intelligence  and  thoroughness,  but  on 
the  whole  we  have  not  done  badly  in  this  respect. 

The  up-keep  of  our  roads  has,  on  the  whole,  been  disappointing. 
There  are,  of  course,  brilliant  exceptions.  If  we  are  to  have  good 
roads  we  must  provide  a  system  that  will  make  good  minute 


COMMUNICATION  AND  TRANSPORTATION  265 

defects  as  soon  as  they  appear.  This  cannot  be  done  without 
constant  and  competent  inspection.  The  best  way  to  provide  this 
service  will  vary  with  roads  of  different  materials  and  subject  to 
different  traffic  intensities.  Whatever  method,  however,  is 
adopted,  the  importance  of  accurate  accounting  for  all  mainten- 
ance expenditures  will  remain  undiminished. 

Our  task  is  such  a  huge  one  that  for  success  we  must  have  team- 
work. Our  federal  scheme  of  government  is  a  hindrance  in 
securing  the  interstate  cooperation  that  the  situation  demands. 
It  is  not  only  in  the  planning  of  interstate  lines  of  traffic  and  in 
securing  uniform  laws  as  to  classification  of  vehicles  and  regula- 
tion of  traffic  that  this  need  exists.  We  should  have  standardiza- 
tion of  nomenclature  so  that,  for  instance,  "improved  road"  will 
mean  the  same  thing  in  Indiana  and  in  New  Jersey;  standard 
system  of  road  signs,  standard  methods  of  accounting,  standard 
units  of  traffic  and  wear,  and,  in  general,  cooperation  and  co- 
ordination between  our  forty-eight  State-road  forces  and  the 
federal  government. 

That  this  coordination  and  the  leadership  needed  for  any  team- 
work can  be  supplied  only  by  the  general  government  is,  to  my 
mind,  the  unanswerable  argument  for  federal  aid.  The  gain  by 
united  and  concerted  effort  will  be  greater  than  that  due  to  any 
federal  appropriation. 

The  financial  problem  involved  is  by  no  means  the  least  of  the 
many  road  questions  that  we  must  settle. 

While  building  and  after  having  finished  the  work,  we  shall 
have  to  keep  up  the  roads  already  built.  This  will  involve  a 
tremendous  outlay.  The  present  total  road  repair  charge  in  this 
country  is  unknown,  but  we  do  know  that  much  of  it  is  wasted 
on  unintelligent  work. 

A\re  must  evidently  look  to  our  sources  of  revenue.  Benefits 
are  conferred  by  road  improvement  on  both  the  land-owner  and 
the  user  of  the  road.  The  former  pays  through  the  ordinary  tax 
levy.  The  latter  pays  a  so-called  license  fee  for  his  automobile 
only  and  nothing  for  his  horses.  It  seems  rational  to  look  to  the 
business  on  the  roads  for  part  of  the  cost  of  building  and  main- 
taining them. 

Enough  has  been  said  to  outline  roughly,  indeed,  the  many  and 
very  serious  problems  suggested  by  a  forecast  of  our  road-work. 


266  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  lesson  to  be  drawn  therefrom  is  the  need  of  thorough  or- 
ganization of  our  road  forces  and  of  careful  preliminary  study. 
The  interests  affected  are  among  the  most  important  to  the  wel- 
fare of  the  nation.  The  investment  will  be  gigantic  in  size,  but 
can  be  made  to  return  a  benefit  far  beyond  its  cost  if  we  will 
handle  it  as  a  business  proposition.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
rush  into  work  of  unparalleled  magnitude  without  adequate 
preparation,  if  we  continue  to  intrust  its  execution  to  men  un- 
skilled in  the  work,  chosen  mainly  on  account  of  past  political 
services  and  lacking  public  confidence,  and  if  we  keep  changing 
them  as  various  parties  may  command  popular  pluralities,  we 
shall  pay  the  price  of  our  folly. 


MITIGATING  RURAL  ISOLATION x 

JOHN   MORRIS   GILLETTE 

THE  statement  is  often  made  that  the  great  urban  problem  is 
that  of  congestion  of  population  while  the  chief  drawback  to 
rural  life  consists  in  the  isolation  of  families  and  people.  It  is 
held  that  life  in  cities  is  too  compact  while  that  in  the  country 
is  characterized  by  too  great  an  aloofness.  Isolation  is  not  solely 
a  matter  of  spatial  separation;  the  greater  the  distance  persons 
are  removed  from  one  another  the  more  intense  the  consequent 
social  aloofness.  On  the  contrary,  isolation  is  in  part  a  state  of 
mind,  one  of  the  chief  factors  of  which  is  a  feeling  of  loneliness, 
and  such  a  state  frequently  occurs  among  persons  living  amid 
dense  urban  populations.  Perhaps  the  greatest  hunger  for 
human  association  and  friendship  is  often  to  be  found  in  the 
midst  of  the  throngs  of  great  cities.  Neighboring  in  cities  is  not 
always  or  mostly  with  those  who  live  next  door  or  in  the  same 
block.  The  urbanite's  closest  friends  may  be  blocks  or  miles 
removed,  necessitating  the  occurrence  of  social  exchanges  at  in- 
frequent intervals.  Similarly  the  church  and  other  institutions 
that  are  attended,  the  theater,  the  recreation  place  and  the  like, 
may  be  far  distant,  requiring  a  considerable  journey  to  attend 
them. 

i  Adapted  from  a  Reprint  from  the  Quarterly  Journal  of  the  University 
of  North  Dakota,  Vol.  VII,  No.  2,  University,  January,  1917. 


COMMUNICATION  AND  TRANSPORTATION  267 

Nevertheless,  although  there  is  danger  of  exaggerating  the 
isolation  obtaining  in  the  country,  the  social  aloofness  that  exists 
there  is  real,  considerable,  and  serious.  Grant  to  individuals 
living  in  cities  friends  and  a  standing  in  some  circle  or  set  of 
persons,  and  unquestionably  opportunities  for  intercourse  and 
amusement,  culture  and  social  service  are  not  only  much  more 
numerous  in  cities  than  in  country  but  in  general  the  distance 
traveled  to  reach  them  is  less;  and  perhaps  it  should  be  added 
that  transportation  and  communication  facilities  are  better. 

There  are  three  proximate  conditions  which  account  for  the 
rural  social  isolation  existing  in  the  United  States;  namely, 
spatial  separation  of  families,  fewness  of  social  institutions,  and 
what  may  be  called  the  rural  state  of  mind.  These  will  be  con- 
sidered for  the  purpose  of  evaluating  the  difficulty  of  overcoming 
or  mitigating  them. 

A  fairly  approximate  perception  of  the  degree  of  separation 
obtaining  among  persons  and  families  in  each  of  the  nine 
geographical  divisions  of  the  nation  may  be  gained  by  dividing 
the  rural  population  by  the  appropriate  division  area.  This  is 
only  approximately  correct  for  rural  density  since,  besides  the 
rural  territory,  the  total  division  area  contains  the  urban  area; 
and  further  the  rural  population  includes  that  of  towns  and 
villages,  or  all  segregated  populations  of  less  than  2,500  in- 
habitants each.  The  latter  statement  is  undoubtedly  of  greater 
import  than  the  former,  creating  the  likelihood  that  the  rural 
population  density  is  somewhat,  though  not  greatly,  less  than  the 
accompanying  figures  indicate.  The  following  table  sums  up  the 
data: 

Population       Families 

Division  Division  Rural        Per  Square     Per  Square 

Area  Population         Mile  Miles 

New  England 62,000  1,097,000  16  4 

Middle  Atlantic -100,000  .  5,593,000  56  T2.7 

E.  N.  Central   246,000  8,633,000  35  8.1 

W.  N.  Central 511,000  7,764,000  15  3.3 

South    Atlantic 260,000  9,103,000  34  6.8 

E.  S.  Central 179,000  6,836,000  38  7.9 

W.  S.  Central   430,000  6,827,000  16  3.2 

Mountain     859,000  1,686,000  2  0.47 

Vacific    318,000  1,810,000  6  1.4 

(Abstract  13th  census,  pp.  29  and  60.) 


268  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

According  to  this  table,  four  of  the  divisions  have  thirty-four 
or  more  persons  or  practically  seven  or  more  families  per  square 
mile,  the  Middle  Atlantic  having  fifty-six  persons  and  almost 
thirteen  families  per  such  area.  Where  there  are  eight  families 
to  the  square  mile  they  might  be  so  located  in  that  space  that  the 
homes  need  be  only  about  one-fourth  of  a  mile  apart.  What 
really  occurs  is  that  the  homes  are  placed  along  adjacent  lines 
of  travel  and  lie  comparatively  near  each  other.  In  the  case  of 
three  divisions,  containing  over  three-tenths  of  the  total  rural 
population  of  the  nation,  there  are  from  three  to  four  families 
to  the  square  mile,  requiring  a  separation  of  homes  of  perhaps 
one-half  mile  or  more.  The  Mountain  and  Pacific  divisions  con- 
tain about  one-twelfth  of  the  rural  population  and  in  these  divi- 
sions the  families  must  be  on  the  average  from  a  mile  to  over  two 
miles  removed  from  one  another. 

In  the  typical  rural  community  are  to  be  found  church  and 
school  generally,  although  there  are  many  neighborhoods  without 
churches.  Farmers'  clubs  are  developing  rapidly  but  are  not  yet 
sufficiently  numerous  and  universal  to  be  considered  typical  of 
farm  communities.  But  perhaps  Grange,  Society  of  Equity,  the 
Union,  or  some  such  organization  might  well  be  included.  This 
list  which  is  liberal  practically  exhausts  the  list  of  institutions 
which  rural  neighborhoods  commonly  possess  and  enjoy.  In  the 
town-country  communities  (villages  with  the  closely  associated 
surrounding  agricultural  region)  no  doubt  should  also  be  in- 
cluded the  lodge.  The  typical  city  community  supports  school, 
church,  saloon  (save  in  prohibition  territory),  lodge,  play  houses, 
dance  halls,  movies,  pool  halls,  and  kindred  places.  Besides  these 
the  shops,  stores,  factories,  and  streets  bring  individuals  into  fre- 
quent contact.  Certainly  institutional  facilities  for  social  inter- 
change in  the  typical  urban  neighborhood  are  far  more  abundant 
than  in  the  typical  farm  community. 

Relative  to  their  quality  for  purposes  of  social  interchange  the 
institutions  of  the  city  communities  are  likely  to  be  superior. 
The  average  rural  church  is  an  anachronistic,  semi-decadent 
affair.  It  typically  comprises  a  one-room  building  where  all 
activities  must  be  accommodated.  It  practices  what  aptly  has 
been  called  "ministerial  vivisection,"  the  distribution  of  a 
minister's  services  between  two  or  more  churches,  with  the  prob- 


COMMUNICATION  AND  TRANSPORTATION  269 

able  consequence  of  being  ministered  to  by  a  man  of  inferior 
training  or  ability.  In  consequence  of  these  conditions,  not  to 
speak  of  others,  its  activities  are  few  and  listless. 

The  typical  country  school  is  likewise  a  backward  institution. 
It,  too,  is  a  small  one-room  affair,  without  facilities  for  diversified 
instruction,  sustaining  an  ill-adapted  course  of  study,  with  too 
few  pupils  to  create  competitive  interest  in  class  work  or  to 
sustain  organized  play.  It  is  ungraded,  demands  a  multiplicity 
of  brief  classes  daily,  and  is  taught  by  a  poorly  paid,  poorly 
trained  pedagog.  In  contrast  with  these  the  average  city  church 
and  school  appear  to  be  very  progressive  and  efficient  institutions, 
and  the  other  agencies  found  in  urban  neighborhoods  but  not  in 
rural  are  of  equally  prepossessing  character. 

Rural  consciousness,  or  the  form  the  rural  social  mind  takes,  is 
a  large  factor  in  the  production  of  rural  isolation.  What  may 
be  phrased  "passive  rural-mindediiess ' '  operates  as  an  efficient 
but  indirect  cause  of  such  isolation.  This  form  of  consciousness 
consists  in  being  satisfied  with  aloofness,  paucity  of  social  or- 
ganizations, dearth  of  contact  and  community  activities,  with  the 
consequence  that  the  individuals  so  conditioned  do  nothing  and 
want  to  do  nothing  toward  improvement.  Of  course  those  who 
are  so  minded  are  not  aware  of  it  any  more  than  do  the  mass  of 
people  take  cognizance  of  the  social  customs  and  modes  of  pro- 
cedure of  the  national,  class,  or  local  groups. 

Not  all  inhabitants  of  country  districts  are  possessed  by  passive 
rural-mindedness.  Some  there  are  who  are  "urban  minded," 
being  discontented  with  rural  life  and  having  a  strong  desire  to 
dwell  in  the  city.  Probably  only  the  powerlessness  to  secure  the 
financial  means  to  carry  out  a  successful  removal  stands  in  their 
way  of  joining  the  urban  ranks. 

Again  there  is  a  state  of  consciousness  which  may  be  called 
"active  rural-mindedness."  Those  who  are  actively  rural 
minded  dwell  in  the  country  because  they  wish  to  do  so.  Never- 
theless, they  are  intelligent  regarding  the  deficiencies  in  rural 
community  matters  and  positively  desire  and  strive  to  remedy 
them.  This  body  of  citizens  constitute  the  hope  of  the  country- 
side. However  it  is  likely  that  the  passively-minded  individuals 
are  in  the  majority,  thus  making  changes  toward  a  better  situa- 
tion difficult  and  slow. 


270  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

That  rural  social  isolation  is  regarded  as  undesirable  by  coun- 
try people  is  attested  by  several  sets  of  events  to  be  mentioned 
without  discussion:  the  flow  of  large  numbers  of  persons  from 
country  to  city ;  the  settlement  of  retired  farmers  in  neighboring 
towns  and  villages;  the  frequent  testimony  of  intelligent  rural- 
ites  to  the  irksomeness  and  the  undesirability  of  the  customary 
social  poverty;  and  the  response  to  the  introduction  of  social 
facilities  by  practically  every  class  of  non-urban  residents,  in- 
cluding the  group  we  have  alluded  to  as  the  passively  rural- 
minded.  That  the  latter  class  respond  is  not  inconsistent  with 
calling  them  passively  rural-minded,  since  they  may  take  ad- 
vantage of  privileges  without  participating  in  their  establishment. 

Perhaps  the  most  severe  strain  arising  out  of  this  situation  is 
suffered  by  the  women  of  the  farm  homestead,  especially  by  the 
mother.  Her  sphere  of  practical  action  is  within  the  confines  of 
the  house,  she  cannot  meet  the  neighbors  at  the  borders  of  the 
adjoining  fields  as  city  women  may  talk  across  lots,  nor  in  the 
exchange  of  tools  and  work  does  she  have  the  opportunity  to  con- 
verse as  do  the  men  of  the  farm,  and  her  field  of  cooperative 
exchange  is  limited.  Neither  does  she  go  to  the  neighboring 
town  for  marketing  and  repair  purposes  as  often  as  the  men. 
Further,  her  work  is  of  a  routine  nature,  lacking  the  variety 
and  the  occurrence  of  new  situations  that  call  for  inventive 
talent  which  the  activities  of  the  outdoor  workers  involve.  That 
farm  women  age  much  earlier  in  life  than  do  the  men  is  no 
doubt  partly  due  to  the  greater  absence  of  intellectual  incitement. 

The  problem  of  rural  isolation  has  attracted  much  attention 
and  naturally  has  brought  forth  a  number  of  proposals  for  solu- 
tions and  panaceas.  One  of  the  most  short-sighted  and  brutal 
suggestions  is  what  may  be  called  "familism."  It  is  asserted 
that  the  social  activities  and  satisfactions  of  rural  inhabitants 
inevitably  must  be  limited  to  the  sphere  of  the  family,  since  that 
institution  represents  the  scope  of  normal  human  association  pos- 
sible to  country  districts.  This  proposal  flies  in  the  face  of 
accomplished  facts  and  is  only  a  dogmatic  generalization  from  a 
narrow  range  of  data,  It  is  doubtless  true  that  the  majority  of 
rural  inhabitants  realize  the  larger  portion  of  their  associational 
life  within  the  family  and  that  many  will  do  so  for  some  time  to 
come.  But  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  family  is  a  most 


COMMUNICATION  AND  TRANSPORTATION  271 

worthy  and  indispensable  institution  and  that  it  is  destined  to 
furnish  much  of  the  social  contact  for  both  rural  and  urban 
inhabitants  in  future,  it  must  be  said  that  it  is  too  small,  un- 
resourceful,  and  monotonous  to  supply  complete  associational 
satisfaction.  Moreover,  multitudes  of  country  neighborhoods 
have  established  and  now  enjoy  larger  community  organizations. 
The  trend  of  the  rural  movement  without  question  is  toward  the 
creation  and. the  adaptation  of  varied  recreational  and  social 
facilities. 

Another  proposition  is  that  American  farmers  shall  abandon 
their  present  system  of  widely  distributed,  separate  homesteads 
and  segregate  themselves  in  some  kind  of  central  farm  village. 
Various  actual  and  ideal  types  of  such  communities  present  them- 
selves, some  of  which  deserve  attention. 

The  European  form  of  farm  village  is  generally  thought  of 
when  the  proposal  in  question  is  considered.  European  farmers 
almost  universally  live  in  small  segregated  communities,  proceed- 
ing from  these  during  the  daytime  to  prosecute  their  agriculture 
on  the  outlying  farms.  In  America,  also,  are  to  be  found  a  few 
types  of  agricultural  village.  In  various  sections  of  the  United 
States  immigrant  Mennonites  have  established  themselves  in  such 
communities,  very  largely  reproducing  here  the  customary  Euro- 
pean prototype.  The  most  indigenously  American  farm  village 
is  to  be  found  among  the  Mormon  settlements  of  the  western 
portion  of  the  United  States  and  Canada.  When  the  Mormons 
settled  Utah  they  designated  an  agricultural  community  some- 
what peculiar  to  themselves.  The  Mormon  settlers  and  recruits 
were  to  settle  in  centers,  all  of  which  were  built  from  a  common 
plant.  Each  village  resident  had  a  considerable  plot  of  land 
surrounding  his  house,  another  plot  of  a  few  acres  just  outside 
the  center,  a  still  larger  piece  still  farther  removed,  and  might 
have  more  land  still  farther  distant.  The  dwellings  are  char- 
acteristically arranged  relative  to  each  other  to  secure  family 
privacy.  A  further  important  characteristic  is  that  the  church 
is  the  center  of  community  interest  and  lies  at  the  foundation  of 
the  Mormon  farm  village  plan. 

Besides  these  existent  types  of  agricultural  villages,  a  strictly 
cooperative  farm,  village  community  has  been  urged.  It  is  pro- 
posed that  not  only  dairies  and  creameries,  but  also  laundries, 


272  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

kitchens,  dining  halls,  and  all  phases  of  domestic  and  distributive 
economic  business  should  be  cooperative. 

These  plans  of  and  proposals  for  farm  villages  possess  both 
interest  and  value,  nevertheless  they  are  confronted  by  several 
obstacles  and  objections.  First,  the  great  majority  of  American 
farmers  have  much  capital  invested  in  houses,  barns,  other  build- 
ings, orchards,  and  other  home  equipment  on  their  separate  allot- 
ments of  land.  To  make  a  change  to  such  a  completely  different 
system  of  living  as  the  farm  village  represents  would  involve  the 
destruction  of  much  of  the  capital  so  invested  and  the  incurring  a 
large  removal  expense.  The  economic  loss  involved  in  the  pro- 
posal is  so  heavy  that  we  cannot  expect  seriously  to  see  it 
executed. 

Second,  to  the  average  farmer  it  would  seem  a  costly  incon- 
venience to  drive  daily  several  miles  to  carry  on  his  farm  work. 
Where  farms  are  small,  as  most  of  them  are  in  Europe  and  to  a 
less  extent  in  the  irrigable  sections  of  the  United  States,  the  dis- 
tances to  the  outlying  land  are  not  great.  But  the  average  size 
of  farms  in  the  United  States  is  138  acres.  Were  the  farm  vil- 
lage large  enough  to  be  of  any  great  social  advantage  it  should 
contain  probably  100  families.  This  being  so,  in  a  district  com- 
posed of  average  sized  farms,  the  more  remote  farms  would  be 
about  four  or  five  miles  removed  from  a  centrally  located  village. 
This  would  mean  a  daily  drive  of  eight  or  ten  miles,  which  is 
practically  prohibitive  because  of  the  economic  loss  involved. 

Third,  a  small  village  of  the  usual  type  possesses  questionable 
advantages,  socially,  when  compared  with  open  country  com- 
munities. Without  the  fuller  social  life,  intellectual  interests, 
ideals,  and  resources  of  the  larger  urban  aggregations,  the  petty 
gossip,  jealousies,  and  bickerings  are  not  conducive  to  increased 
satisfaction  or  a  higher  existence.  The  paucity  of  recreational 
and  amusement  facilities,  the  almost  entire  absence  of  those  of  a 
wholesome  kind,  especially  for  boys  from  ten  to  sixteen  years  of 
age,  engenders  idleness  and  the  resorting  to  vicious  gangs  and 
forms  of  sport  which  are  demoralizing.  The  average  small  vil- 
lage in  the  United  States  represents  one  of  the  most  deadening 
and  disheartening  forms  of  community,  and,  as  a  problem,  chal- 
lenges the  serious  attention  of  the  American  nation. 

The  suggestion  of  a  cooperative  form  of  farm  village  is  worthy 


COMMUNICATION  AND  TRANSPORTATION          273 

of  consideration.  That  the  scheme  is  Utopian  should  not  con- 
demn it  in  advance.  Its  real  test  is,  can  it  overcome  the  diffi- 
culties just  presented  relative  to  farm  villages  in  general  ? 

In  the  case  of  the  establishment  of  new  agricultural  communi- 
ties, especially  in  irrigation  districts  where  farms  are  small,  the 
cooperative  proposal  is  most  deserving  of  attention.  Aside  from 
these  relatively  infrequent  situations,  the  heavy  investment  in 
separate  farm  plants  and  the  remoteness  of  the  majority  of 
farms  from  the  central  villages  would  appear  to  make  the  pro- 
posal impracticable. 

In  view  of  these  considerations  we  may  regard  our  present 
system  of  distributed  and  separate  farm  homesteads  as  perma- 
nent, and  are  forced  to  conclude  that  the  mitigation  of  rural  isola- 
tion must  come  from  other  directions.  In  this  connection  it  is 
worthy  of  note  that  in  agricultural  Utah  there  is  an  observed 
tendency  toward  independent  farm  homes.  From  the  top  of  the 
divide  between  Cache  and  Salt  Lake  valleys  in  Northern  Utah 
it  is  seen  that  in  the  former  valley,  which  was  settled  very 
early,  there  is  an  occasional  homestead  in  the  open  country  while 
in  the  northern  portion  of  the  former,  a  region  settled  more  re- 
cently, separate  farm  homes  appear  to  be  the  rule. 

Considerable  may  be  expected  from  the  improvement  and  ex- 
tension of  the  rural  communicating  system,  including  under  this 
caption  roads,  rural  delivery,  automobiles,  interurban  trolleys, 
telephones,  and  periodical  literature.  Each  of  these  agencies  is 
making  its  contribution  toward  the  establishment  of  a  more  ef- 
fective rural  solidarity  and  also  toward  bringing  country  and 
urban  districts  into  closer  touch. 

Improved  and  extended  roads  are  essential  to  the  development 
of  the  economic  interests  of  agriculture  and  are  the  indispensable 
foundation  for  all  larger  community  organizations  and  activi- 
ties. The  larger  organizations  which  the  improved  rural  church, 
the  consolidated  school,  farmers'  clubs,  and  recreational  and 
community  centers  are  demanding  can  materialize  only  as  the 
highways  are  built  to  permit  rapid  and  comfortable  transit. 

The  automobile  and  rural  delivery  are  serviceable  in  creating 
larger  contacts  and  in  stimulating  the  building  of  a  better  high- 
way system.  Where  population  density  warrants  the  establish- 
ment of  rural  free  delivery  of  mail,  rural  routes  are  assigned  by 


274  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  national  government  on  condition  that  the  routes  to  be  used 
in  carrying  the  mail  should  be  put  and  kept  in  passable  shape. 
Organizations  and  individuals  interested  in  the  extended  use  of 
the  automobile  are  promoting  both  local  and  inter-community 
highway  improvement.  Since  so  many  farmers  have  become 
owners  of  cars,  they  have  the  more  heartily  joined  the  move- 
ment for  the  establishment  of  good  roads. 

The  automobile  quickens  rural  life  by  bringing  families  and 
communities  into  closer  and  more  frequent  contact.  Distances 
which  once  took  hours  or  days  to  compass  by  horse  or  horse- 
drawn  vehicle,  now  are  covered  in  a  few  minutes  or  hours. 
Could  every  farmer  possess  an  automobile,  the  problem  of  es- 
tablishing larger  and  better  rural  institutions  in  considerable 
measure  would  be  solved  because  transit  would  be  speedy  and 
easy  and  because  the  care  of  teams  involved  in  travel  by  horse- 
drawn  vehicles  would  be  obviated. 

Rural  free  mail  delivery  and  the  circulating  library  are  effec- 
tive agencies  for  reducing  isolation.  The  former  places  within 
reach  of  out-of-town  residents  the  possibility  of  daily  contact 
with  the  world  of  events  by  means  of  the  daily  press ;  makes  pos- 
sible more  frequent  correspondence  with  friends  and  relatives; 
and  helps  cultivate  a  habitual  perusal  of  periodical  and  library 
literature.  In  its  turn  the  circulating  library  brings  to  neigh- 
borhoods which  command  its  services  the  enlivening  store  of 
fiction,  the  inspiration  of  good  literature,  and  the  practical 
knowledge  of  the  whole  range  of  natural  and  social  science. 

A  definite  local  communitization  of  rural  districts  constitutes 
a  further  method  of  mitigating  rural  isolation.  Communitiza- 
tion takes  place  to  the  degree  to  which  the  inhabitants  of  a  par- 
ticular locality  think  and  act  together,  the  alternative,  individ- 
ualization,  being  most  often  observed  in  the  country,  in  that 
residents  of  such  locality  think  and  act  as  if  they  were  only  indi- 
viduals. It  is  highly  desirable  that  people  generally,  and  rural 
inhabitants  especially,  should  cultivate  a  neighborhood  outlook, 
appreciate  the  good  results  which  flow  from  increased  cooper- 
ation, and  set  about  establishing  the  agencies  for  realizing  the 
community  spirit. 


COMMUNICATION  AND  TRANSPORTATION  275 

SOCIAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  AGRICULTURAL 

PRESS  1 

J.    CLYDE   MARQUIS 

THE  influence  which  the  printed  page  has  had  upon  agriculture 
cannot  be  definitely  measured.  The  idea  has  been  generally  ac- 
cepted that  practical  and,  especially,  successful  farming  has  un- 
til recently  been  conducted  apart  from  the  directions  given  in 
books.  The  disfavor  with  which  the  countryman  who  considers 
himself  especially  practical  has  regarded  those  who  consult  the 
written  experiences  of  others  in  books  has  been  too  generally 
dwelt  upon  in  discussions  of  the  literature  of  agriculture. 

The  influence  of  the  printed  page  is  particularly  subtle.  The 
casual  reader  often  believes  that  he  has  received  no  benefit  from 
an  academic  treatment  of  a  topic,  yet  his  subsequent  methods 
are  indisputable  evidence  that  he  has  absorbed  an  idea  and 
adopted  the  suggestions,  even  though  he  believes  he  has  not. 
To  say  that  the  most  important  single  influence  for  the  improve- 
ment of  agriculture  has  been  the  periodical  press  would  be  both 
trite  and  unnecessary,  yet  no  discussion  of  the  influence  of  the 
printed  page  upon  agricultural  methods  would  be  complete  did 
it  not  begin  with  this  premise. 

A  sketch  of  the  development  of  agricultural  literature  is  neces- 
sary to  secure  an  adequate  appreciation  of  its  importance.  Its 
beginnings  are  unknown,  and  there  were  probably  treatises  on 
practical  agriculture  in  early  periods  of  Chinese  history  of 
which  we  now  have  no  record.  There  are  only  occasional  glimpses 
of  the  development  of  the  art  of  husbandry  in  the  early  history 
of  man.  These  appear  in  Biblical  literature  and  in  Egyptian 
records  and  later  become  more  evident  in  the  writings  of  the 
Greeks  and  Romans. 

The  first  foundations  of  the  literature  of  husbandry  which 
may  be  said  to  support  the  present  structure  were  laid  by  the 
Roman  writers,  and  many  of  the  fundamental  propositions 
presented  by  them  may  still  be  accepted  with  trifling  modifica- 
tions. The  husbandmen  of  to-day  would  be  benefited  greatly  by 
a  thoughtful  perusal  of  the  advice  of  Cato  and  Columella. 

i  Adapted  from  Annals  of  the  Amer.  Acad.,  40:  158-162,  March,  1912. 


276  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Following  the  Eoman  period  there  is  a  stretch  of  centuries 
until  the  time  when  the  early  English  writers  appear.  Arthur 
Young  has  been  mentioned  as  the  forerunner  of  our  modern 
agricultural  writers,  and  he  unquestionably  set  a  standard 
which  has  been  seldom  equaled  and  rarely  surpassed  in  descrip- 
tive and  helpful  writing  on  rural  topics.  The  awakening  which 
resulted  from  the  entertaining  works  by  Young  was  the  begin- 
ning of  the  agricultural  revival  in  England,  and  was  also  coin- 
cident with  the  beginning  of  modern  agriculture  in  America. 
The  friendly  relations  between  Young  and  George  Washington 
unquestionably  had  considerable  to  do  with  the  popularity  of 
the  writings  by  the  former  in  America. 

Among  American  pioneers  were  a  few  capable,  foresighted  men 
who  appreciated  the  importance  of  permanent  records  in  agri- 
culture, and  their  work  is  principally  to  be  found  in  the  pro- 
ceedings of  the  various  agricultural  societies  then  in  the  fore- 
front of  the  agricultural  advance.  Even  before  the  opening  of 
the  nineteenth  century  there  was  a  considerable  volume  of  help- 
ful agricultural  literature  not  only  in  proceedings  of  societies 
but  in  a  few  periodicals  and  in  a  number  of  excellent  books. 
Following  the  opening  of  the  new  century  the  increase  in  printed 
matter  relating  to  the  farm  and  the  field  was  steady  but  slow. 
Periodicals  appeared  and  after  more  or  less  successful  careers 
were  absorbed,  transformed  or  abandoned  until  the  end  of  the 
first  quarter  of  the  century  found  very  little  substantial  ad- 
vancement. Beginning  about  1830  the  quantity  and  the  char- 
acter of  books  and  journals  on  agriculture  received  a  consider- 
able impetus.  Capable  men  began  to  realize  that  an  interchange 
of  ideas  was  necessary.  Books  for  farmers  could  no  longer  sat- 
isfy those  who  were  interested  in  a  given  subject  because  of  the 
distribution  of  the  people  over  a  wider  area  and  the  growing 
complexity  of  rural  problems.  The  earlier  journals  were  pub- 
lished and  edited  by  men  of  ideals,  backed  by  the  courage  of  ac- 
complishment, who  looked  upon  their  journals  as  agencies  for 
progress  rather  than  mere  commercial  enterprises.  They  stood 
for  certain  reforms  and  improvements,  and  though  sometimes 
radical  and  extreme  in  their  methods,  their  purpose  was  on  the 
whole  to  improve  agriculture,  which  they  unquestionably  did. 

The  three  prime  divisions  of  agricultural  literature  then,  as 


COMMUNICATION  AND  TRANSPORTATION  277 

to-day,  were :  First,  the  periodical ;  second,  the  public  and  semi- 
public  document,  and  third,  the  book,  the  three  standing  in  this 
order  as  to  numbers  distributed.  Periodicals  reach  a  larger  au- 
dience than  either  the  proceedings  of  societies,  some  of  which 
are  private  and  others  semi-public  documents,  or  books  which 
have  a  more  limited  circulation  but  perhaps  a  greater  influence 
upon  those  who  are  actually  reached. 

As  a  conclusion  of  this  hasty  glance  at  the  development  of 
agricultural  literature,  we  find  at  the  beginning  of  a  new  cen- 
tury that  periodical  literature  is  most  highly  developed  and  spe- 
cialized, and,  in  the  opinion  of  many,  commercialized  to  an  ex- 
treme degree  which  must  sooner  or  later  result  in  the  consolida- 
tion or  transformation  of  many  journals.  With  approximately 
five  hundred  periodicals  devoted  to  one  or  many  of  the  phases 
of  agriculture  and  related  topics,  the  field  of  periodical  literature 
may  be  said  to  be  crowded.  These  numerous  periodicals  send 
out  literally  millions  of  copies  each  week,  and  while  a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  rank  and  file  of  rural  people  do  not  read  a 
periodical  regularly,  all  are  touched  directly  or  indirectly  by  the 
ideas  thus  distributed.  Were  they  properly  distributed,  there 
would  be  several  copies  each  month  for  each  person  engaged  in 
agriculture  in  the  entire  country.  This  consistent  dissemina- 
tion of  literature,  going  on  as  it  does  without  ceasing  and  with 
growing  force,  constitutes  the  greatest  agency  for  agricultural 
improvement. 

Next  in  order  of  importance  must  be  placed  the  public  docu- 
ments. They  have  increased  in  numbers  within  the  last  decade 
with  great  rapidity,  and  within  the  past  five  years  the  quantity 
of  reliable  free  literature  for  the  man  on  the  farm  has  been  al- 
most doubled.  There  is  little  doubt  that  this  increase  will  con- 
tinue for  some  time  to  come.  The  recognition  by  the  daily  news- 
paper of  the  importance  of  agriculture,  and  consequently  the 
regular  appearance  of  departments  concerning  such  matters  is 
one  of  the  newest  and  most  significant  phases  of  this  rapid  in- 
crease of  printed  matter  on  farm  topics. 

For  the  books  on  agriculture  there  is  less  to  be  said.  The 
most  valuable  works  now  found  in  our  libraries  are  the  product 
of  the  last  decade.  The  tendency  for  more  popular  and  attrac- 
tive literature  has  unquestionably  brought  down  the  average 


278  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

quality  of  the  books  produced.  The  new  book  that  will  remain 
authentic  for  a  decade  is  the  exception,  yet  there  are  many  books 
now  near  the  end  of  their  second  decade  of  popularity  that  con- 
tinue to  meet  with  a  large  demand.  The  character  of  the  new 
works  on  agriculture  is  on  the  whole  entirely  helpful,  since  a 
new  type  of  literature  which  is  both  interesting  and  instructive 
is  certain  to  be  evolved  through  the  experience  of  the  publishers. 

To  pass  to  the  social  significance  of  this  literature,  its  im- 
provement in  quality  and  its  increase  in  distribution  and  in 
influence  are  due  to  the  appearance  of  a  generation  that  is  pre- 
pared to  be  benefited  by  it.  As  soon  as  men  are  trained  to  put 
human  experience  in  rural  affairs  into  forceful,  convincing  writ- 
ing, the  reader  will  be  able  to  secure  more  material  aid  from 
such  writings.  The  facility  with  which  reliable  matter  may  be 
secured  is  the  greatest  point  in  favor  of  its  development.  We 
receive  our  new  agricultural  thoughts  in  our  daily  press  along 
with  the  news  of  progress  in  other  industries.  The  organiza- 
tion of  press  bureaus  within  the  last  few  weeks  by  the  agricul- 
tural colleges,  state  experiment  stations,  boards  of  agriculture  and 
federal  organizations  is  an  important  advance  step  in  this  direc- 
tion. Few  items  of  particular  significance  in  agriculture  now 
escape  the  daily  press,  and  whereas  such  news  was  previously 
written  in  a  form  designed  to  be  of  general  interest,  it  is  now 
prepared  by  a  special  writer  often  trained  in  agriculture,  so 
that  it  is  both  interesting  and  accurate. 

Plans  are  in  operation  in  several  state  experiment  stations  to 
send  regularly  to  the  local  newspapers  carefully  prepared  mat- 
ter designed  to  meet  local  needs.  This  newspaper  matter  on 
agriculture  is  closely  followed  by  the  dissemination  of  clearly 
written  and  attractive  circulars  and  bulletins  dealing  with  spe- 
cial topics.  These  appear  either  as  reading  courses  or  as  separate 
publications  just  as  the  subjects  are  timely.  Bulletins  of  this 
character  are  now  being  issued  regularly  by  a  large  number  of 
the  leading  experiment  stations  and  boards  of  agriculture,  and 
are  being  distributed  through  the  mails,  at  farmers'  meetings, 
banks,  etc.,  until  the  numbers  that  are  actually  placed  in  the 
hands  of  working  farmers  aggregate  millions  of  copies  each  year. 
The  printed  proceedings  of  state  and  local  associations  of  stock- 
men, horticulturists,  grain-growers,  etc.,  are  distributed  to  mem- 


COMMUNICATION  AND  TRANSPORTATION  279 

bers  and  others  at  practically  no  cost  to  the  recipient.  A  library 
comprising  literally  tons  of  material,  most  of  it  trustworthy,  is 
being  assembled  by  many  farmers  at  absolutely  no  cost  beyond 
the  postage  on  their  letters  of  request.  The  consumption  of  agri- 
cultural books  has  increased  markedly  during  recent  years.  The 
extension  of  lecture  courses  into  outlying  districts  has  gained  the 
attention  of  several  people  who  as  a  consequence  become  inter- 
ested in  following  up  these  addresses  by  a  careful  study  of  the 
books  written  by  the  same  men.  Once  the  working  farmer  has  a 
taste  of  the  benefits  which  he  can  secure  from  a  careful  study  of 
such  literature  he  demands  large  quantities  of  printed  matter. 

Much  of  the  agricultural  literature  of  the  past  decade  has 
been  local  and  specific  in  that  it  has  dealt  with  particular  prob- 
lems as  they  exist  in  a  particular  community,  and  has  not  been 
designed  to  broaden  the  farmer's  social  relations.  It  is  note- 
worthy that  a  large  percentage  of  the  newer  literature  deals  with 
his  social  relations;  the  periodical  press  as  well  as  books  and 
public  documents  now  deal  with  social  questions.  The  travel- 
ing library,  which  is  growing  rapidly  in  favor  in  rural  communi- 
ties in  many  states,  now  has  its  quota  of  good  books  and  bulletins 
dealing  with  agriculture.  The  shelves  of  the  reading-rooms  of 
all  kinds  of  gathering  places  for  country  people  now  bear  their 
burden  of  the  new  literature.  While  much  of  it  falls  far  below 
the  standards  established  by  the  best  writers,  the  influence  which 
it  has  is  on  the  whole  beneficial.  Agricultural  literature  is  on 
the  average  of  as  high  a  quality  as  the  technical  literature  of  any 
industry,  and  if  judged  with  consideration  of  its  quantity  it 
perhaps  exceeds  in  interest  and  helpfulness  the  average  of  the 
printed  page  of  other  industries. 

The  present  need  is  not  so  much  more  literature  as  a  better 
interpretation  of  farm  problems,  both  economic  and  social. 
There  is  a  vast  amount  of  repetition  and  generalization  in  pres- 
ent-day writings.  New  ideas  and  details  are  growing  less  fre- 
quent from  day  to  day.  In  the  mass  of  literature  a  signboard  is 
needed  to  point  the  way  for  the  uninitiated.  This  interpretation 
of  the  printed  page  is  expected  to  be  the  next  important  ad- 
vance in  the  field  of  the  literature  of  the  farm. 


280  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

THE  SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  TELEPHONE  * 

G.    WALTER   FISKE 

AMONG  these  modern  blessings  in  the  country  home,  one  of  the 
most  significant  is  the  telephone.  A  business  necessity  in  the 
city,  it  is  a  great  social  asset  in  the  rural  home,  like  an  additional 
member  of  the  family  circle.  It  used  to  be  said,  though  often 
questioned,  that  farmers'  wives  on  western  farms  furnished  the 
largest  quota  of  insane  asylum  inmates,  because  of  the  monotony 
and  loneliness  of  their  life.  The  tendency  was  especially  notice- 
able in  the  case  of  Scandinavian  immigrant  women,  accustomed 
in  the  old  home  to  the  farm  hamlet  with  its  community  life. 

To-day  the  farmer's  wife  suffers  no  such  isolation.  To  be  sure 
the  wizards  of  invention  have  not  yet  given  us  the  teleblephone, 
by  which  the  faces  of  distant  friends  can  be  made  visible ;  but  the 
telephone  brings  to  us  that  wonderfully  personal  element,  the 
human  voice,  the  best  possible  substitute  for  the  personal  pres- 
ence. Socially,  the  telephone  is  a  priceless  boon  to  the  country 
home,  especially  for  the  women,  who  have  been  most  affected  by 
isolation  in  the  past.  They  can  now  lighten  the  lonely  hours  by 
a  chat  with  neighbors  over  household  matters,  or  even  have  a 
neighborhood  council,  with  five  on  the  line,  to  settle  some  ques- 
tion of  village  scandal!  All  sorts  of  community  doings  are 
speedily  passed  from  ear  to  ear.  Details  of  social  plans  for 
church  or  grange  are  conveniently  arranged  by  wire.  Symp- 
toms are  described  by  an  anxious  mother  to  a  resourceful  grand- 
mother and  a  remedy  prescribed  which  will  cure  the  baby  before 
the  horse  could  even  be  harnessed.  Or  at  any  hour  of  the  day  or 
night  the  doctor  in  the  village  can  be  quickly  summoned  and  a 
critical  hour  saved,  which  means  the  saving  of  a  precious  life. 

On  some  country  lines  a  general  ring  at  six  o'clock  calls  all 
who  care  to  hear  the  daily  market  quotations ;  and  at  noon  the 
weather  report  for  the  day  is  issued.  If  the  weather  is  not 
right,  the  gang  of  men  coming  from  the  village  can  be  inter- 
cepted by  'phone.  Or  if  the  quotations  are  not  satisfactory,  a 
distant  city  can  be  called  on  the  wire  and  the  day's  shipment 

i  Adapted  from  "The  Challenge  of  the  Country,"  pp.  66-68.  Association 
Press,  New  York,  1912. 


COMMUNICATION  AND  TRANSPORTATION  281 

sent  to  the  highest  bidder — saving  money,  time,  and  miles  of 
travel. 

All  things  considered  the  telephone  is  fully  as  valuable  in  the 
country  as  in  the  city  and  its  development  has  been  just  as  re- 
markable, especially  in  the  Middle  West  where  thousands  of  in- 
dependent rural  lines  have  been  extended  in  recent  years,  at  very 
low  expense. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

COMMUNICATION  AND  TRANSPORTATION 

Bing,  Phil.     Country  Weekly.     Applet  on,  N.  Y.,  1917. 
Morton,  M.  B.     Agric.  Press.  Relation  of  the  Press  to  Agriculture,  in 
Proceedings  12th  Annual  Session,  Middle  Tenn.  Farmers'  Institute, 
Nashville,  1913. 

Thorpe,  Merle.     The  Coming  Newspaper,  Holt,  N.  Y.,  1915. 
University  of  Missouri  Bui.,  Journalism  Series,  Columbia. 
The  County  Newspaper,  No.  2,  pp.  22-34,  May,  1912. 
The  Ideal  Country  Paper,  July,  1914. 

Building  a  Circulation — Methods  and  Ideals  for  Small  Town  News- 
papers, Powell,  J.  B.,  No.  6,  Feb.,  1914. 

The  News  in  the  County  Paper,  Ross,  C.  G.,  No.  4,  March,  1913. 
Women  in  Country  News  Work,  Dutter,  Mrs.  C.  E.,  No.  5,  pp.  21-22, 

May,  1913. 

Writing  for  Farmers,  Shamel,  C.  A.,  No.  5,  pp.  29-33,  May,  1913. 
Circulating  the  Newspaper  Among  the  Farmers,  Rucker,  Frank  W., 

No.  20,  pp.  3-9,  Sept.,  1919. 
Reminders  for  the  Country  Editor,  Finn,  Bernard,  No.  11,  pp.  31-33, 

May,  1915. 
Current  Aericultural  Journals.     Cyclopedia  Am.  Agriculture,  Bailey, 

IV:  78-87. 

Wallace,  J.  P.  Journalism,  How  the  Farm  Paper  Helps  the  Implement 
Dealer,  Wallace's  Farmer,  41;  234,  235,  Feb.  11,  1916. 

ROADS 

Campbell,  A.  W.  System  of  road  building  in  Canada.  Modern  Road 
Building;,  First  Report  of  Congress  of  American  Road  Builders, 
Seattle,  Wash.,  1909,  p.  55. 

Carney,  Mabel.  Roads  and  the  Road  Problem.  Country  Life  and  the 
Country  School,  pp.  108-133.  Row,  Chicago,  1912. 

Flagg,  Ernest.  Road  Building  and  Maintenance  and  Examples  of 
French  and  English  methods.  Century  79 : 139-144.  November, 
1909. 

Gillette,  John  M.  The  Improvement  of  Transportation  and  Com- 
munication. In  his  Constructive  Rural  Sociology,  pp.  110-116. 
Sturgis,  N.  Y.,  1912. 

Gross,  H.  H.  Highways  and  Civilization.  Modern  Road  Builders. 
Report  of  1st  Congress  of  American  Road  Builders.  Seattle, 
Wash.,  1909,  p.  210.  ' 


282  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Laut,  Agnes  C.  Price  We  Pay  for  Bad  Roads.  Collier's,  42:14-15, 
July  17,  1909. 

Moore,  W.  H.  The  Social,  Commercial  and  Economic  Importance  of 
the  Road  Subject.  Circular  34,  Office  of  Good  Roads,  Washington. 

Official  Good  Roads.     Yearbook  of  the  United  States,  1912. 

Page,  Logan  Waller.     Good  Roads — the  Way  to   Progress.     World's 

Work,  18: 11807-19,  July,  1909. 

Roads  and  Canals,  Cyclopedia  of  American  Agriculture,  IV:  320-8. 
Roads,  Paths  and  Bridges.     Sturgis,  N.  Y.,  1912. 

Parker,  Harold.  The  Good  Roads  Movement,  Annals,  40 :  51-8,  March 
1912. 

Pennypacker,  J.  E.  State  Management  of  Public  Roads;  its  Develop- 
ment and  Trend.  United  States  Department  of  Agriculture  Year- 
book, pp.  211-26,  1914. 

Pope,  Jessie  E.  Rural  Communication,  Bailey,  Cyclopedia  of  Ameri- 
can Agriculture,  IV :  312-320. 

Powers,  E.  L.  History  of  Road  Building  in  the  United  States.  Mod- 
ern Road  Building.  Report  of  1st  Congress  of  American  Road 
Builders,  Seattle,  1909. 

Pratt,  J.  H.  Good  Roads  Movement  in  the  South.  Annals,  35 : 105-13, 
January,  1910. 

Ravenel,  S.  W.  RavenePs  Road  Primer  for  School  Children.  Mc- 
Clurg,  Chicago,  1912. 

Shaler,  Nathaniel  S.     American  Highways.     Century,  N.  Y.,  1896. 

Sipe,  Susan  B.  Good  Roads  Arbor  Day.  Suggestions  for  Its  Ob- 
servance. U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education,  Bulletin  No.  26,  1913. 

Streets  and  Highways  in  Foreign  Countries.  Special  Consular  Re- 
ports, 1891,  Vol.  3.  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Foreign  Commerce. 

Vogt,  Paul  L.  Means  of  Communication  and  Rural  Welfare.  In  his 
Introduction  to  Rural  Sociology,  Chapter  IV.  Appleton,  N.  Y., 
1917. 

Waugh,  F.  A.     Rural  Improvement,  pp.  36-58.     Judd,  N.  Y.,  1914. 


CHAPTER  XI 

CORRECTIONAL  AGRICULTURE  AND  RURAL 

POLICE 

A.     CORRECTIONAL  AGRICULTURE 
THE  OUTDOOR  TREATMENT  OF  CRIME  * 

HARRIS   R.    COOLEY 

THERE  is  no  distinct  outcast  class  of  offenders.  The  establish- 
ment of  the  outdoor  or  farm  prison  is  one  expression  of  this  new 
attitude.  It  is  a  long  step  from  the  gloom  and  depression  of  the 
felon's  cell  to  the  sunlight  and  fresh  air  of  the  open  field.  The 
normal  environment  of  the  country  tends  quickly  to  reestablish 
a  normal  life.  The  open-air  treatment  is  as  helpful  to  the  victim 
of  vice  and  crime  as  to  the  victim  of  tuberculosis. 

In  a  number  of  the  institutions  of  our  country  the  outdoor 
methods  have  been  tried  with  marked  success.  Dr.  Leonard, 
Superintendent  of  the  Ohio  State  Reformatory  at  Mansfield,  has 
the  spirit  and  attitude  toward  his  young  men  which  arouse  in 
them  a  surprising  sense  of  honor  and  fidelity.  There  are  nearly 
a  thousand  prisoners,  many  of  them  committed  for  most  serious 
offenses.  A  school  of  conduct  or  of  ethics  helps  to  maintain  the 
moral  atmosphere  of  the  institutions.  The  trusted  men  enter 
into  a  formal  bond  with  the  superintendent.  Out  of  eighteen 
hundred  young,  vigorous  fellows  who  have  been  trusted  to  work 
out  on  the  six-hundred-acre  farm,  only  nine  have  violated  their 
trust  and  run  away.  As  one  sees  these  men  in  the  open,  sunny 
fields,  many  of  them  without  guards,  doing  faithfully  their  daily 
tasks  under  normal  conditions,  it  is  difficult  to  realize  that  a 
few  years  ago  they  would  have  toiled  inside  crowded,  gloomy 
prisons  with  heavily  barred  windows.  They  themselves  have 
constructed  their  shop  buildings  within  the  wall  for  the  employ- 

1  Adapted  from  the  Outlook,  Vol.  07:  403-8,  Feb.  25,  1911. 

283 


284  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

ment  for  winter  months  and  stormy  days,  but  these  are  as  full 
of  light  and  fresh  air  as  a  model  factory.  The  institution  im- 
presses you  as  a  training-school  with  a  helpful,  hopeful  attitude 
toward  life. 

The  Province  of  Ontario,  under  the  direction  of  the  Provin- 
cial Secretary,  W.  J.  Hanna,  is  developing  an  outdoor  prison  at 
Guelph.  The  spirit  of  fellowship,  cooperation,  and  confidence 
prevails.  Some  temporary  buildings  shelter  the  prisoners  who 
work  under  the  open  sky,  cultivating  the  soil,  ditching,  grading, 
and  making  roads.  One  of  the  Canadian  pastors,  who  perhaps 
had  been  skeptical  about  the  project,  walked  over  the  farm  and 
saw  the  groups  of  men  laboring  in  the  fields.  He  said  to  me,  "I 
was  so  moved  by  it  that  I  went  off  by  myself  and  cried."  In 
his  enthusiasm  the  head  officer  declares  that  "the  prisoners 
have  done  a  great  work."  With  this  attitude  the  Guelph  Prison 
Farm  will  do  much  for  the  imprisoned,  and  still  more  for  the 
citizenship  of  Ontario. 

In  Cleveland  we  began  the  outdoor  treatment  by  purchasing 
a  group  of  farms  ten  miles  from  the  city,  and  before  any  perma- 
nent buildings  could  be  erected  we  tested  the  plan  by  taking 
"trusties"  and  other  prisoners  from  the  City  Workhouse  and 
lodging  them  in  the  old  scattered  farm-houses.  Our  farmer 
neighbors  were  frightened.  Our  friends  prophesied  that  the 
prisoners  would  all  run  away.  The  plan  worked.  Most  of  the 
men  completed  their  sentences,  giving  faithful  and  willing  ser- 
vice. We  ourselves  have  been  surprised  at  times  at  the  results 
of  some  of  our  ventures  with  these  men.  The  confidence  placed 
in  them,  the  useful  work  in  garden  and  field,  the  tonic  of  the  sky 
and  trees,  developed  a  new  sense  of  honor  and  a  common  senti- 
ment that  it  is  a  mean  and  cowardly  thing  to  ' '  take  a  sneak  from 
the  farm." 

In  four  years  five  thousand  prisoners  served  time  on  the 
Correction  Farm.  These  men  have  worked  at  excavating  for 
our  buildings,  quarrying  and  crushing  stone,  grading,  road-mak- 
ing, under-draining  the  land,  clearing  dead  timber  from  the 
forest,  and  doing  general  farm  labor.  They  have  had  better 
food,  for  they  have  raised  it  themselves.  The  officers  in  charge 
of  the  working  groups  of  laborers  have  been  really  foremen 
rather  than  typical  prison  guards.  The  purpose  has  been  not 


CORRECTIONAL  AGRICULTURE  285 

simply  to  locate  the  institution  in  the  country,  but  to  have  a 
great  estate  as  a  basis  for  unlimited  useful  employment,  and 
also  as  a  means  of  controlling  and  shaping  a  large  environment. 
The  Correction  Farm  is  part  of  a  great  tract  of  nearly  two  thou- 
sand acres,  or  more  than  three  square  miles,  on  which  are  the 
Tuberculosis  group,  the  Almshouse  group,  and  also  an  extensive 
municipal  cemetery  to  be  graded  and  developed  by  prison  labor. 
The  area  is  so  large  and  diversified  that  the  Almshouse  group  is 
a  mile  and  a  half  from  the  Correction  group,  and  two  hundred 
feet  higher.  Each  of  the  four  divisions  is  distinct  on  its  own 
five  hundred  acres,  yet  out  on  the  broad  fields  and  in  the  light, 
airy  shops  of  the  Correction  buildings  every  prisoner  can  be 
used  at  his  best  in  the  raising  of  food  and  the  making  of  all 
those  things  which  will  add  to  the  life  and  comfort  of  them- 
selves and  the  other  unfortunates  who  are  the  residents  of  the 
Farms. 

A  visiting  judge  said  to  me,  "It  is  so  fine  out  here,  I  should 
be  afraid  some  of  these  prisoners  would  want  to  stay."  Near 
by  a  group  of  men  were  shoveling  dirt  into  a  grading  wagon.  I 
said  to  him:  "Judge,  you  see  those  men  at  work;  they  are 
drinking  an  abundance  of  pure  water,  they  eat  heartily,  they 
sleep  well.  They  say  to  themselves,  'This  is  not  "made  work," 
this  is  real,  genuine  work.  Free  men  right  over  there  are  getting 
a  dollar  and  a  half  a  day  for  doing  this/  The  old  prison  cell, 
the  food,  the  confinement  of  their  labor,  tended  to  depress  them 
and  to  make  them  hopeless.  This  treatment  quickly  brings  them 
to  themselves  and, arouses  the  normal  man.  There  is  a  psycholog- 
ical element,  which  you  have  not  thought  of  and  which  we  did 
not  fully  foresee,  which  makes  these  men  more  anxious  to  go 
back  and  again  take  their  places  in  society  and  industry.  At 
the  expiration  of  their  sentences  they  go  out  without  the  prison 
pallor,  stronger  in  the  face  of  temptation,  and  ready  at  once  to 
do  a  full  day 's  work. ' ' 

For  the  friendless  prisoners  when  released  a  Brotherhood 
Home  Club  grew  up  in  the  city,  largely  through  the  efforts  and 
support  of  the  men  themselves.  The  purpose  of  the  Brotherhood 
is  to  find  them  employment  and  to  provide  for  them  a  comfortable 
place  in  which  to  live  until  their  first  pay  day. 

That  the  colony  movement  is  the  outgrowth  of  a  common  feel- 


286  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

ing  and  attitude  is  manifest  from  the  fact  of  its  springing  up 
under  varying  conditions  in  different  countries.  In  1892  the 
Belgian  Government  began  the  organization  of  Merxplas  in  a 
barren  and  desolate  region  twenty-five  miles  from  Antwerp. 
This  is  a  penal  colony  established  primarily  for  vagrants,  but 
which  receives  offenders  with  sentences  as  long  as  seven  years. 
There  are  at  present  about  five  thousand  prisoners.  The  grounds 
are  laid  out  on  a  broad,  general  plan.  The  men  have  con- 
structed the  buildings,  including  a  fine  church.  They  take 
pride  in  caring  for  the  surrounding  lawns,  the  trees  and  flowers, 
the  gardens  and  orchards.  The  group  is  in  the  midst  of  a  great 
tract  of  cultivated  fields,  green  pastures,  and  planted  pine  for- 
ests. Director  Stroobant  estimates  the  present  value  of  the 
estate  at  a  million  dollars.  To  develop  all  of  this  out  of  the 
naked,  barren  land  must  awaken  interest  and  hope  in  the  hearts 
of  many  of  the  laborers.  Those  who  had  special  tasks  in  the 
care  of  the  stock  seemed  to  feel  an  ownership  in  the  horses  and 
cattle.  One  prodigal  son  showed  us  a  young  pig  which  he  had 
in  his  arms. 

With  a  small  military  guard  as  a  reserve,  these  five  thousand 
irregulars  and  unfortunates  are  controlled  and  directed  by  a 
staff  of  only  eighty  wardens.  Some  of  the  better  prisoners  as- 
sist in  the  supervision  of  the  work.  The  most  serious  offenders 
are  confined  in  buildings  with  large  interior  courts.  They  are 
thus  held  more  securely,  and  also  kept  from  direct  association 
with  the  others.  Their  open  courts,  however,  furnish  oppor- 
tunity for  much  outdoor  life  and  labor. 

In  addition  to  work  on  the  farm,  other  industries  are  carried 
on,  such  as  brick  and  tile  making,  wood-working,  mat,  boot  and 
shoe  making,  weaving,  and  tailoring.  The  men  receive  small 
wages,  a  part  of  which  is  paid  in  colony  money,  which  they  can 
spend.  The  balance  is  paid  to  them  on  their  discharge.  As  one 
sees  the  multitude  of  men,  quiet  arid  orderly,  going  to  their  va- 
ious  places  of  employment,  he  is  convinced  that  it  is  possible 
to  conduct  even  a  great  centralized  prison  on  the  general  colony 
plan. 

In  many  ways  the  model  prison  farm  of  Europe  is  Witzwill. 
It  is  on  a  mountain-girt  plain  about  thirty  miles  west  of  Berne, 
Switzerland.  The  great  tract  of  two  thousand  acres,  which  for- 


CORRECTIONAL  AGRICULTURE  287 

merly  was  wet,  boggy,  and  known  as  the  great  Moss,  has  been, 
by  draining  and  cultivation,  transformed  into  a  beautiful  and 
valuable  estate.  There  are  two  hundred  and  fifty  prisoners,  with 
sentences  of  from  two  months  to  five  years.  The  men  themselves 
have  constructed  the  Swiss  buildings,  the  barns,  workshops,  dor- 
mitories, and  dwellings.  They  seem  fond  of  working  with  the 
animals.  With  the  oxen  and  heavy  wagons,  they  came  trudg- 
ing in  from  the  harvest-fields  for  their  noonday  rest.  They  have 
fifty  horses  and  seven  hundred  head  of  cattle.  Accompanied  by 
twelve  of  the  prisoners,  the  young  stock  had  been  sent  for  the 
summer  months  to  the  pastures  of  the  higher  mountains.  They 
sell  butter,  cheese,  and  vegetables,  but  all  manufactured  goods  are 
for  the  institution  or  the  State. 

The  spirit  of  confidence  and  democracy  is  manifest.  The 
guards  or  foremen  were  washing  up  for  dinner  along  with  the 
other  men.  The  children  of  the  employees  were  playing  about. 
The  Superintendent,  Mr.  Kellerhals,  who  has  been  with  the  farm 
from  the  beginning,  said  to  us,  "Yes,  these  men,  when  well 
dressed,  look  just  like  the  people  outside."  About  one-half  turn 
out  well,  one-fourth  are  doubtful,  and  one-fourth  come  back. 
In  a  year  only  three  had  run  away. 

In  the  hospital  we  found  clean  beds  with  outlook  on  the  gar- 
den and  pastures.  The  windows  were  open  and  the  fresh  moun- 
tain air  was  blowing  in,  but  there  were  no  patients  in  this  out- 
door prison  ward.  It  stood  out  in  marked  contrast  to  many  of 
our  own  institutions,  which  by  their  construction  and  environ- 
ment are  the  breeding-places  of  tuberculosis  and  other  physical 
and  moral  diseases.  Recent  research  has  brought  to  light  the 
fact  that  the  mortality  from  tuberculosis  among  our  own  pris- 
oners is  three  times  as  great  as  in  our  general  population. 

Germany  is  making  extensive  use  of  the  farm  colony  method 
in  dealing  with  vagrancy  and  minor  misdemeanors.  At  the 
Labor  House  of  Rummelsburg,  near  Berlin,  out  of  two  thousand 
prisoners,  one  thousand  were  working  outside  on  the  sewage 
farms  owned  by  the  municipality.  In  France,  Holland,  Hun- 
gary, and  Italy  the  Government  has  made  successful  experiments 
with  the  colony  system  for  the  treatment  of  offenders.  The  testi- 
mony is  that  it  is  less  expensive  for  the  State  and  much  better 
for  the  health  and  reformation  of  the  prisoners. 


288  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  reflex  influence  on  society  of  more  rational  and  humane 
treatment  of  its  erring  members  is  the  larger  part  of  this  bene- 
ficence. For  its  own  sake  society  cannot  afford  to  be  cruel  and 
brutal  to  its  meanest  and  most  unworthy  member.  Russia  is 
to  reap  a  more  bitter  harvest  than  her  exiles.  Love  your  enemies 
is  a  good  social  law.  If  we  lift  society  from  the  bottom,  we  all 
move  upward  together.  We  thus  rise  not  to  decline  and  fall. 
To  be  helpful  to  ''one  of  the  least"  who  is  in  prison  is  not  sim- 
ply a  religious  sentiment ;  it  indicates  the  only  method  of  social 
development  which  will  conserve  and  make  permanent  the 
achievements  of  our  civilization. 


OUTDOOR  WORK  FOR  PRISONERS1 

THOMAS    J.    TYNAN,    WARDEN,    COLORADO    STATE   PENITENTIARY 

I  THINK  the  ideal  work  for  convicts  is  outdoor  work,  prefer- 
ably farm  work,  which  puts  them  back  on  the  soil  and  takes  them 
away  from  the  cities  and  their  temptations.  I  believe  every 
state  should  have  large  farms  whereon  they  might  work  their 
prisoners  with  profit  to  the  state  and  the  men  as  well.  Men  who 
work  in  the  open  air  become  strong  physically  and  it  is  much 
easier  to  reform  a  strong  healthy  man,  than  a  poor  weakling, 
who  has  not  proper  balance.  When  men  are  taught  farm  work, 
they  can  easily  obtain  positions  on  farms  after  their  release, 
where  they  are  as  a  rule  kindly  treated  and  where  they  will  have 
some  social  standing,  which  is  an  impossibility  in  the  crowded 
cities.  By  the  use  of  convict  labor  on  the  roads  the  taxpayers 
have  been  more  than  reimbursed  by  the  value  of  the  roads  built. 
This  labor  does  not  enter  into  competition  with  free  labor,  as 
these  roads  could  not  otherwise  have  been  built  on  account  of  the 
expense.  The  counties  pay  for  the  maintenance  of  the  camps  in 
which  the  men  are  worked,  but  the  men  are  in  charge  of  overseers 
from  the  prison,  who  thoroughly  understand  the  handling  of  this 
class  of  labor  and  the  building  of  roads.  Our  report  will  show 
you  the  immense  saving  in  this  way  of  road  building,  and  the 
state  is  thus  acquiring  hundreds  of  miles  of  good  roads,  which 

i  Adapted  from  Report  of  Convict  Labor  Commission,  State  of  Con- 
necticut, Public  Document — Special,  Hartford,  Conn. 


CORRECTIONAL  AGRICULTURE  289 

could  not  otherwise  have  been  built.  We  expect  to  more  than 
double  our  mileage  during  this  present  period  and  also  to  double 
the  value  of  our  farm  products. 


THE  PRISON  FARM1 

WM.    J.    HOMER 
WAEDEN,    GREAT    MEADOW    PRISON,    COMSTOCK,    N.    Y. 

I  AM  much  in  favor  of  the  plan  in  operation  here,  i.e.,  a  number 
of  farms,  or  a  farm  connected  with  each  prison  as  they  are  es- 
tablished. I  believe  there  should  be  some  shops  maintained  in 
which,  perhaps,  certain  men,  though  well  behaved  and  amenable 
to  discipline  and  absolutely  to  be  trusted,  should  be  retained 
throughout  the  extent  of  their  sentences,  because  there  are  a  cer- 
tain number  of  men  in  every  prison  population  who  have  come 
from  the  cities,  have  been  in  factory  work  all  their  lives,  and  in 
order  to  support  their  families  will  have  to  return  to  factory  life 
on  release.  To  take  such  men  for  a  year  or  two  and  put  them  on 
the  farm  would  not  make  farmers  of  them  but  would  spoil  a 
factory  hand.  But  with  these  exceptions,  I  think  all  those  who 
show  themselves  fit  for  it,  should  be  sent  to  farms  where  they 
may  gain  strength  of  body  and  cleanliness  of  mind  which  farm 
work  seems  to  bring  to  men,  that  they  may  be  able  to  go  back 
to  liberty  stronger  and  better  men  than  they  were  on  entering 
prison. 


HEALTH  ON  PRISON  FARMS 1 

W.    O.    MURRAY 
CHAIRMAN,    BOARD   OF   PRISON    COMMISSION 

WE  employ  the  greater  part  of  our  labor  on  farms.  The  State 
owns  eight  farms,  aggregating  about  32,000  acres,  and  we  have 
four  plantations  rented  or  leased,  aggregating  about  18,000  acres, 

i  Adapted  from  Report  of  Convict  Labor  Commission,  State  of  Con- 
necticut, Public  Document — Special,  Hartford,  Conn. 


290  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

making  in  all  about  50,000  acres.  The  land  actually  in  cultiva- 
tion on  these  farms  in  the  aggregate  amounts  to  about  46,000 
acres.  We  employ  in  the  cultivation  of  these  farms  forces  rang- 
ing from  2,800  to  3,500  convicts.  A  small  farm  is  located  in 
an  isolated  section,  separate  from  the  male  convicts,  and  it  is 
gratifying  to  state  that  they  have  been  nearly  self-sustaining. 
We  also  have  another  farm  near  Huntsville  Prison  owned  by 
the  State  where  we  have  segregated  the  tubercular  and  trachoma- 
tous  convicts.  Also  upon  this  farm  we  have  what  we  call  the 
"Old  Soldiers'  Home,"  where  we  keep  and  care  for  the  old  and 
decrepit  convicts  of  both  the  Confederate  and  Union  forces. 
This  has  proven  to  be  rather  an  expensive  department  of  our 
Prison  System.  However,  we  have  the  satisfaction  of  having  a 
remarkable  record  with  reference  to  the  deaths  caused  by  tuber- 
culosis in  this  System.  Out  of  a  prison  population  averaging 
something  over  4,000  convicts  last  year  we  had  only  seven  deaths 
from  tuberculosis,  and  it  is  my  candid  opinion  that  if  the  jails 
of  the  State  could  be  put  in  a  sanitary  condition,  such  that 
the  convicts  would  not  contract  tuberculosis  before  being  trans- 
ferred to  the  penitentiary,  it  would  be  but  a  few  years  until  we 
would  have  eradicated  tuberculosis  from  the  Prison  System,  or 
at  least  the  ratio  of  tuberculosis  among  the  convicts  would  be  a 
negligible  quantity  in  the  System. 


IN  THE  HEALING  LAP  OF  MOTHER  EARTH  * 

WINTHROP    D.    LANE 

THE  Indiana  Village  for  Epileptics,  opened  eight  years  ago 
and  just  coming  to  full  development,  comprises  1,246  rich  acres 
about  two  miles  north  of  Newcastle  and  forty-five  miles  from 
Indianapolis.  It  lies  in  a  country  of  rolling  farm  land  that 
rises  and  falls  through  an  altitude  of  100  feet  or  more.  Old 
Indian  mounds  dot  the  landscape  and  frequent  groves  of  walnut, 
ash,  maple,  oak  and  poplar  help  to  break  the  view. 

The  visitor  for  the  first  time  will  not  know  when  he  reaches 
the  village.  No  walls  enclose  it,  no  impressive  architecture  bor- 

i  Adapted  from  the  Survey,  Vol.  35:  373-380,  Jan.,  1916. 


CORRECTIONAL  AGRICULTURE  291 

rowed  from  the  monasteries  of  another  age  stamp  it  as  an 
"asylum."  It  is  just  another  farm.  Groups  of  attractive,  two- 
story  brick  buildings,  where  patients  live,  eat  and  sleep,  lie  back 
from  the  road,  but  even  these  are  more  than  likely  to  be  passed 
without  notice. 

"The  scientific  treatment,  education,  employment  and  custody 
of  epileptics,"  says  the  law,  shall  be  the  object  of  this  farm 
community.  Translated,  this  means  that  here  the  epileptics  of 
the  state  may  lead  as  nearly  as  possible  the  normal  life  of  farm- 
ers. Those  for  whom  most  can  be  done  educationally  are  given 
the  preference;  purely  custodial  cases  and  persons  violently  in- 
sane are  not  received,  though  the  law  does  not  prohibit  them. 

Inmates  do  not  have  to  work  quite  so  hard  as  most  farmers, 
for  they  are  the  wards,  not  the  servants  of  the  state.  Nor  can 
they  come  and  go  entirely  as  they  please,  for  epilepsy  is  usually 
accompanied  by  mental  defectiveness  and  supervision  is  there- 
fore necessary.  This  supervision  may  amount  to  no  more  than 
being  constantly  within  sight  of  other  inmates,  for  epileptics  dis- 
play the  same  fellow-feeling  and  care  for  one  another  as  the 
deaf.  An  epileptic  who  stands  by  and  does  nothing  while  his 
fellow  has  a  seizure  often  finds  himself  an  outcast  for  a  time 
from  his  associates. 

Two  hundred  and  thirty  men  and  boys  are  now  living  in 
comfort  on  this  farm.  When  the  land  has  been  fully  improved 
and  all  buildings  have  been  erected  the  village  will  be  equipped 
to  care  for  about  1,000  or  1,200.  Women,  it  is  hoped,  will  be 
admitted  next  year.  They  will  live  in  separate  buildings  a  mile 
from  the  men. 

The  care  of  epileptics,  like  that  of  feeble-minded,  is  in  the  main 
an  educational  problem.  A  school  is  to  be  erected,  and  shops 
for  various  forms  of  industrial  activity.  The  work  of  the  farm 
also  is  given  an  educational  value.  There  is  almost  no  kind  of 
farm  labor  in  which  the  epileptics  do  not  assist.  They  help  in 
the  growing  of  crops,  the  care  of  live  stock  and  poultry,  in 
building  fences,  in  making  and  repairing  roads,  and  in  keeping 
the  weeds  down  at  the  sides  of  the  road.  Sixteen  epileptic 
teamsters,  whose  seizures  come  only  at  night  or  can  be  predicted 
beforehand,  water,  feed  and  bed  their  own  horses.  "I  do  not 
believe,"  declares  Dr.  W.  C.  Van  Nuys,  superintendent  of  the 


292  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Village,  "that  I  could  get  sixteen  paid  teamsters  who  would 
give  us  as  little  trouble  in  their  work  as  these  selected  patients." 

The  village  for  epileptics  is  more  than,  a  place  in  which  to 
keep  busy.  It  is  a  place  in  which  to  enjoy  some  degree  of  indi- 
vidual life.  The  congregate  plan  of  housing  inmates,  which 
brings  them  all  together  under  one  roof,  has  been  abandoned, 
and  instead  patients  are  scattered  about  the  farm  in  small 
groups,  carefully  selected  to  be  as  nearly  homogeneous  as  pos- 
sible. 

When  women  are  received  the  Blue  River  will  be  used  as  a 
natural  division  for  the  sexes.  On  each  side  three  separate 
colonies  will  be  built :  one  will  be  devoted  to  adults  of  the  bet- 
ter class,  one  to  children  of  the  better  class,  and  one  to  low  grade 
adults  and  children.  The  colonies  for  the  men  are  already  partly 
built  and  occupied.  The  low  grade  adults  and  children,  while 
in  the  same  group,  live  apart  from  each  other. 

Each  colony  has  its  own  orchard,  garden  and  small  fruits, 
its  own  horses,  pigs,  chickens,  ducks  and  turkeys.  The  living 
rooms  are  provided  with  phonographs,  newspapers  and  maga- 
zines. Some  of  the  inmates  receive  their  own  home  papers. 
Leslie's  Weekly,  Judge  and  Life  are  the  most  popular  of  the 
magazines  taken,  and  "Robinson  Crusoe"  is  most  in  demand  of 
the  books. 

While  Indiana  is  not  the  first  state  to  make  special  provision 
for  her  epileptics,  the  movement  is  comparatively  new.  The  first 
special  public  institution  for  epileptics  was  established  in  1867 
at  Bielefeld,  Germany.  In  1886  a  colony  was  opened  in  England 
by  private  philanthropy.  Ohio  opened  its  institution  for  both 
sane  and  insane  epileptics  at  Gallipolis  in  1892.  From  these  be- 
ginnings the  movement  has  grown  rapidly.  There  are  to-day 
fifty  institutions  in  Germany  having  special  provisions  for 
epileptics,  nine  in  England  and  several  in  Switzerland,  Holland, 
Belgium,  Australia  and  Canada. 

New  York  was  the  second  state  in  this  country  to  found  an 
epileptic  coloi^,  her  institution  for  sane  epileptics  at  Sonyea 
being  open  in  1894.  Massachusetts,  New  Jersey,  Kansas,  Mis- 
souri, Texas,  Pennsylvania,  Virginia,  Connecticut,  Illinois,  Iowa, 
Michigan  and  Wisconsin  have  since  been  added  to  the  list  of 
states  making  special  provision. 


CORRECTIONAL  AGRICULTURE  293 

Some  of  these  states  have  been  quick  to  see  the  advantage 
of  the  true  farm  village  type  of  institution.  Michigan  acknowl- 
edges her  debt  to  Indiana  in  the  plan  and  arrangements  of  cot- 
tages on  her  1,510  acre  farm  at  Wahjamega,  Tuscola  county, 
bought  in  1913.  Dormitories,  dining-room  and  day  room  oc- 
cupy the  ground  floor,  and  employees'  quarters  the  second.  An 
old  two-story  hotel  on  the  site,  was  remodeled  into  a  cottage  for 
twenty- four  patients.  There  are  now  living  in  cottages  pro- 
vided out  of  the  original  appropriation  of  $200,000  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  institution,  155  patients. 

Illinois  is  laying  out  her  village  of  1,100  acres  at  Dixon  on 
the  small  group  plan.  No  buildings  for  inmates  are  to  be  more 
than  two  stories  high,  some  of  them  being  limited  to  one  story. 
All  buildings  are  to  be  of  fireproof  construction.  Iowa  is  dis- 
tributing groups  of  cottages  about  her  1,144  acre  farm.  The 
buildings  for  patients,  both  hospitals  and  cottages,  are  one- 
story  and  of  fireproof  construction. 

The  Indiana  farm  community  for  misdemeanants  is  a  city 
hewn  from  the  wilderness.  Already  within  its  first  year  this 
farm  is  actually  emptying  the  jails  of  nearby  counties. 

Indiana  has  long  hated  her  jails.  For  a  score  of  years  in- 
vestigations, newspaper  exposure,  commission  reports  and  all  the 
artillery  of  denunciation  availed  nothing  against  these  "  agencies 
of  vice  and  training  schools  of  crime."  Now,  by  the  simple  ex- 
pedient of  providing  a  wholesome,  bracing  substitute,  Indiana 
is  literally  starving  her  jails  and  work-houses  out  of  existence. 
Some  that  heretofore  aspired  to  a  nightly  population  of  eight 
or  ten  now  find  themselves  caring  for  only  two  or  three. 

If  the  besetting  evil  of  jails  is  idleness,  the  outstanding  virtue 
of  this  farm  community  is  industry.  Perhaps  it  was  well  that 
the  institution  got  its  start  when  the  ground  was  covered  with 
snow  and  there  were  only  tents  to  live  in.  To  work  was  the 
only  way  to  be  comfortable,  and  the  spirit  then  engendered  has 
been  maintained.  It  is  now  kept  before  the  minds  of  the  pris- 
oners in  many  subtle  ways.  " Positively  no  loafing"  read  signs 
at  a  score  of  points,  giving  those  who  pass  a  sense  of  choice  that 
can  have  but  one  psychological  effect — a  desire  not  to  exercise 
that  choice. 

Perhaps  it  is  the  frontier  character  of  the  work  that  gives  the 


294  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

air  of  industrious  cooperation  so  noticeable  in  the  present  stage 
of  the  farm's  development.  Few  people  could  be  put  at  the 
task  of  building  a  town  where  none  had  been  before  and  not  be 
interested.  Each  prisoner  can  see  the  beginning  and  end  of  his 
own  job,  and  its  relation  to  the  work  of  others.  He  can  see  a 
bustling  community  taking  form  before  his  own  eyes  and  as  a 
result  of  his  own  efforts.  Work,  under  circumstances  like  these, 
is  more  than  a  mere  means  of  passing  time ;  it  is  fascinating,  con- 
structive, creative,  and  it  has  caught  the  slumbering  interest  of 
many  a  roving  spirit  whose  previous  acquaintance  with  the  law 
was  limited  to  iron  bars  and  walled  idleness. 

A  large  part  of  the  work  in  walled  prisons  is  either  not  found 
at  all  outside  of  these  prisons  or  is  monopolized  by  women  or 
handicapped  classes  like  the  blind.  It  is  not  educative  and  adds 
little  to  the  prisoner's  wage-earning  capacity.  Nothing  could  be 
stronger  than  the  contrast  between  this  and  the  industrial  op- 
portunities on  Indiana's  penal  farm.  The  buildings,  even  to  the 
cutting  and  sawing  of  much  of  the  timber,  have  been  erected  by 
the  prisoners.  The  sewer  system  is  now  being  installed  by  pris- 
oners. Prisoners  are  building  two  and  one-half  miles  of  railway 
switch  over  rough  land,  doing  the  grading  themselves.  They  are 
building  their  own  roads.  They  are  laying  thirty  miles  of  fence. 
They  will  install  their  own  power  plant.  They  are  now  mak- 
ing handles  for  all  their  implements  and  tools.  This  winter 
they  will  make  brooms.  They  not  only  erected,  entirely  unaided, 
the  toilet  facilities  in  the  dormitories,  but  installed  the  plumb- 
ing and  shower-baths  as  well. 

Indiana  is  not  the  first  to  establish  a  penal  farm.  Such  farms 
are  common  in  Europe.  There  are  three  in  this  country  besides 
Indiana's,  one  at  Cleveland,  Ohio,  one  at  Kansas  City,  Kan.,  and 
one  at  Occoquan,  Va. 

Indiana  has  learned  that  she  cannot  build  congregate  insti- 
tutions fast  enough  to  take  care  of  her  insane.  So  she  has 
changed  her  plans.  She  has  decided  to  provide  the  tonic  of 
farm  life  for  all  her  insane  who  can  profit  by  it.  When  the  leg- 
islature of  1911  appropriated  $75,000  for  the  purchase  of  such 
a  colony,  Governor  Marshall  and  his  advisers  selected  the  East- 
ern Hospital  for  the  parent  institution. 

Unlike  the  villages   for  epileptics  and  the  farm  for  misde- 


CORRECTIONAL  AGRICULTURE  295 

meanants,  which  are  technically  "villages,"  this  tract  is  a  real 
colony.  It  draws  its  population  direct  from  the  Eastern  Hos- 
pital, instead  of  from  the  whole  state,  and  it  is  administered 
through  that  institution. 

On  the  rich  acres  of  Wayne  Farms,  as  the  colony  has  been 
christened,  thirty  patients  of  varying  degrees  of  insanity  are 
now  living  the  simple  life.  Eleven  occupy  a  remodeled  farm 
dwelling  called  Cedar  House;  another  group  a  remodeled  school 
building  called  Maple  House.  An  old  tavern,  built  about  1840 
for  the  convenience  of  immigrants  to  the  West,  is  being  made 
over  and  will  house  twenty-five  more  patients. 

Patients  now  at  Wayne  Farms  do  teaming,  plowing,  grass- 
cutting  and  similar  occupations  under  little  or  no  supervision. 
Some  are  put  in  charge  of  the  farm  machinery  in  the  fields.  On 
the  day  of  my  visit  five  patients  were  digging  a  cellar  at  Cedar 
House  under  an  employed  foreman.  Others  were  hoeing  beans. 
One  sturdy  workman  stopped  chopping  wood  long  enough  to 
urge  us  to  collect  for  him  some  unpaid  bills,  fictions  of  his  dis- 
eased mind. 

In  Wisconsin  districts  containing  one  or  more  counties  have 
established  small  agricultural  communities  for  their  insane,  only 
the  most  acute  cases  being  consigned  to  hospitals. 

This  plan  was  worked  out  thirty-three  years  ago,  and  for  the 
past  eighteen  years  Wisconsin  has  kept  abreast  of  the  demands 
of  her  insane  population  for  institutional  care.  The  counties 
build  the  farm  communities  (asylums)  and  each  county  sending 
patients  to  one  pays  one-half  the  maintenance  of  its  own  charges, 
the  state  paying  the  other  half.  This  is  the  best  system  of  state 
care  for  the  insane  yet  devised  in  this  country. 


FARMING  AS  A  CURE  FOR  THE  INSANE  1 

W.    E.    TAYLOR 

I  AM  fully  convinced  that  a  thoroughly  equipped  farm  prop- 
erly conducted  will  contribute  more  to  the  cure  of  the  insane 

i  Adapted    from    National    Conference    of    Charities    and    Corrections, 
17:943-4,  F.  23,  07. 


296  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

than  any  other  one  thing  we  may  resort  to.  I  base  my  asser- 
tion upon  experience  and  experiments  of  ten  years  and  the  re- 
sults obtained  are  most  gratifying. 

In  order  to  obtain  the  best  results,  farming  or  gardening 
should  be  done  in  a  strictly  scientific  manner  and  the  patients 
should  be  partners  in  the  work,  and  in  a  manner  enjoy  a  part 
of  the  benefits ;  that  is,  one  or  two  acres  should  be  attended  by  a 
few  patients  and  a  premium  offered  for  the  best  products. 

The  seed  should  be  selected  to  suit  the  soil  or  the  soil  analyzed 
and  fertilized  to  meet  the  requirements  of  the  seed  planted. 
The  crops  should  be  rotated  scientifically  to  prevent  an  exhaus- 
tion of  the  nutriment  in  the  soil.  This  should  all  be  done  under 
the  direction  of  a  thoroughly  competent  foreman,  and  the  pa- 
tients should  be  taught  and  made  to  understand  the  purpose 
of  analysis,  fertilization  and  rotation,  as  well  as  how  to  plant 
and  cultivate.  Experiments  in  this  line  are  carried  on  at  this 
institution  and  we  get  splendid  results.  At  a  small  cost  for 
proper  fertilizers  our  soil  is  made  to  yield  three  and  four  times 
more  than  previously  raised  with  no  more  work  or  seed  re- 
quired. 

Employment  of  any  kind  is  always  good,  but  when  some  in- 
centive is  offered,  the  patient  is  stimulated  to  greater  activity, 
and  the  old  morbid  concentration  is  changed  and  the  mind  under- 
goes a  phenomenal  transformation.  Drudgery  and  routine  will 
not  accomplish  the  desired  results  any  more  than  a  wagon  wheel 
running  in  the  same  track  for  months  will  obliterate  a  rut. 

Every  state  institution  for  the  care  of  the  insane  should  have 
at  least  one  half  acre  of  good  tillable  land  for  each  patient. 
None  but  thoroughbred  stock  should  be  raised  as  they  cost  no 
more  to  feed  and  care  for  than  the  ordinary  scrubs  and  the 
profits  are  much  greater. 

The  plan  of  allotting  stock  to  patients  as  well  as  land,  results 
in  a  rivalry,  which  brightens  the  patient's  mind  and  in  a  short 
time  restores  him  to  his  normal  condition  if  his  case  is  at  all 
curable. 

Aside  from  the  great  curative  benefit  the  patient  receives, 
the  institution  is  provided  with  an  abundance  of  vegetables, 
which  materially  reduces  the  cost  of  maintenance.  Again,  the 
state  farm  should  be  conducted  on  a  high  scientific  plan  as  an 


CORRECTIONAL  AGRICULTURE  297 

example  to  the  community.  Reliable  and  adaptable  seed  should 
be  provided  the  neighboring  farmers  and  they  should  be  per- 
mitted to  purchase  at  a  nominal  cost  thoroughbred  stock. 


JUVENILE  DELINQUENCY  IN  RURAL  NEW  YORK1 

KATE   HOLLADAY    CLAGHORN 

A  GENERAL  impression  is  abroad  that  juvenile  delinquency  is 
peculiarly  a  problem  of  the  cities  and  especially  of  the  foreign 
population  of  the  cities.  In  so  far  as  this  impression  is  based 
upon  statistics  of  arraignments  or  commitments  it  must  be  veri- 
fied from  some  other  source,  because  of  the  unfitness  of  such 
statistics  to  give  adequate  information  about  the  problem.  In 
cities  many  acts  which  are  disregarded  in  the  country  districts 
are  punishable  by  law:  and  in  cities  the  standard  of  enforce- 
ment of  law,  especially  against  children,  is  much  more  rigorous, 
than  in  the  country.  The  result  is  that  the  official  record  of 
rural  juvenile  delinquency  is  unduly  low  because  it  fails  to  in- 
clude much  bad  conduct  that  is  passed  over  without  court  action 
and  soon  forgotten  but  which,  if  committed  in  the  city,  would 
bring  the  children  concerned  to  the  judgment  of  the  court  and 
add  their  names  to  the  list  of  delinquents. 

We  can  say,  however,  from  the  facts  brought  to  light,  that 
there  is  a  problem  of  juvenile  delinquency  in  rural  districts  and 
that  it  is  a  serious  one.  During  the  investigation  little  com- 
munities were  found  which  at  first  sight  appeared  to  have  no 
problem  yet,  after  study,  each  yielded  up  a  quota  of  "bad" 
children  of  various  grades.  The  showing  in  the  pages  of  the 
report  may  well  bring  doubt  into  the  minds  of  readers  who  are 
under  a  delusion  that  their  own  neighborhoods  are  free  from 
taint. 

Looking  over  the  case  histories  and  such  summary  figures  as 
we  are  able  to  use,  we  find  emerging  distinctly  two  general  types 
of  character:  The  active,  enterprising,  intelligent  child — the 
born  leader — and  the  duller  and  more  stupid  child,  the  natural 

i  "Juvenile  Delinquency  in  Rural  New  York,"  U.  S.  Department  of 
Labor,  Children's  Bureau,  Washington,  D.  C.,  pp.  11,  15,  21-31,  40,  54; 
Bulletin  Pub.  No.  32. 


298  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

complement  and  accomplice  and  victim  of  the  first  type.  Many 
instances  of  such  partnerships  will  be  seen  in  the  case  histories. 
The  obviously  defective  child  is  in  the  minority. 

What  have  community  influences  to  do  with  producing  juvenile 
delinquency?  First  let  us  look  at  the  general  setting — physical 
and  social. 

Within  the  bounds  of  our  definition  of  "rural"  the  separate 
communities  studied  had  a  considerable  range  of  variation  in 
character.  One  type  is  the  little  country  village —  the  trading 
center  of  a  surrounding  agricultural  district.  Its  population  is 
made  up  mainly  of  the  native-born  white  of  native  parentage — 
the  old  American  stock — and  is  decreasing  rather  than  increas- 
ing because  its  young  men  and  women,  as  fast  as  they  grow  up, 
are  caught  in  the  current  flowing  to  the  large  towns  and  cities. 

Going  out  of  the  village  center,  and  "on  the  hill"  perhaps, 
we  come  upon  little  aggregations  of  people,  not  big  enough  for 
a  village  group  nor  yet  wholly  isolated  on  scattered  farms. 
Such  aggregations  may  gather  about  some  crossroads  or  straggle 
along  some  secondary  highway.  Here  the  conditions  described 
for  the  village  are  in  most  respects  exaggerated  for  the  worse. 
These  little  centers,  too,  are  often  the  survival  of  better  days, 
and  there  has  been  an  even  greater  drain  on  the  population  than 
on  that  of  the  village.  And  this  has  resulted  even  more  definitely 
in  a  survival  of  the  least  fit.  As  a  net  result  the  little  isolated 
settlement  is  apt  to  be  of  a  distinctly  lower  grade.  There  is 
less  intelligence  and  activity ;  the  social  standard  is  lower. 

Still  farther  away  from  the  center  we  come  to  the  isolated  farm 
where  many  of  our  cases  are  found.  This  may  be  a  good,  pleas- 
ant, decent  home,  but  its  owners  are  so  far  away  from  social 
influences  of  any  kind  that  they  find  it  hard  to  take  advantage 
of  them.  On  the  other  hand,  the  isolated  dwelling  may  be  a 
tumble-down  old  shack  to  which  have  withdrawn  a  family  group 
too  inefficient  to  maintain  themselves  in  an  organized  commun- 
ity, or  too  vicious  to  be  tolerated  there.  Here  we  reach  almost 
the  negation  of  social  life.  Practically  all  good  influences  are 
wanting.  This  is  such  an  extreme  type,  and  the  evil  influences 
so  obvious,  that  it  was  thought  undesirable  to  devote  much  time 
to  hunting  out  examples  of  it.  It  seemed  better  to  lay  emphasis 
on  the  normal  community,  the  "country  village"  that  even  yet 


CORRECTIONAL  AGRICULTURE  299 

holds  a  large  proportion  of  our  native  citizens,  rather  than  on 
the  degenerate  "hill  people"  who  are  comparatively  few  in  num- 
bers. But  such  families  were  not  avoided  when  they  came  within 
the  range  of  our  study,  and  several  instances  will  be  found 
described. 

A  step  was  also  taken  in  the  other  direction — into  villages 
where  there  is  a  background  of  agricultural  prosperity  in  the 
surrounding  farming  district,  and  into  villages  feeling  the  stimu- 
lus of  industrial  development  and  either  growing  into  towns  or 
showing  the  social  effects  that  come  from  contact  with  such  towns. 
Sometimes  being  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  large  town  empha- 
sizes the  "deadness"  of  the  little  town.  The  young  people  get 
away  more  easily  to  cheap  amusements — the  moving  pictures,  the 
cheap  theaters,  the  garish  saloons,  the  evening  promenade  along 
the  brightly  lighted  town  thoroughfare — and  find  their  own  vil- 
lage the  duller  by  contrast.  And  they  are  more  rapidly  drained 
away  permanently  by  the  industrial  opportunities  nearer  at  hand. 

Industrial  activity  may  strike  the  village  itself.  Small  fac- 
tories start  up,  and  a  factory  population  is  established.  Foreign- 
ers begin  to  come  in,  and  the  original  social  homogeneity  of  the 
American  country  village  is  lost.  It  is  interesting  to  note,  how- 
ever, that  foreigners  appear  to  have  been  little  involved  in  the 
delinquency  found. 

Still  another  type  is  the  country  village  which  has  felt  the 
stimulus  of  industry  by  becoming  the  summer  or  suburban  resi- 
dence of  people  who  have  achieved  prosperity  in  the  industrial 
centers.  Here  a  very  distinct  social  stratification  is  set  up,  in 
which  "the  natives"  is  a  term  in  common  use  almost  as  patroniz- 
ing as  * '  the  foreigners, ' '  used  in  the  cities.  Such  activity — better 
schools,  better  churches,  organized  play — for  the  building  up  of 
the  social  ideal.  The  danger  here  is  that  the  improvements  may 
not  really  take  root  in  the  community  on  which  they  are  super- 
imposed. 

Next  to  take  into  account  is  the  economic  background.  In  gen- 
eral, in  the  communities  studied  it  is  that  of  the  farm  and  of 
agriculture.  The  usual  complaint  in  the  average  country  district 
is  that  "farming  does  not  pay."  This  means  that  the  old- 
fashioned  farms  and  farming  of  our  early  years  are  being  dis- 
placed by  the  opening  of  more  fertile  districts,  the  introduction 


300  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  more  effective  methods,  requiring  greater  intelligence  and  more 
capital  than  the  old-style  farmer  had.  In  one  region  studied  the 
•attempt  is  made  to  carry  on  farming  in  the  old  ways.  Here  a 
large  proportion  of  the  farmers  are  poor.  Two-thirds  of  those 
who  have  records  in  the  farm  bureau  have  labor  incomes  varying 
from  below  $200  to  $500  a  year.  Of  this  two-thirds,  one-fourth 
make  from  $100  to  $200,  while  one-fifth  have  no  labor  income  at 
all.  And  in  the  hill  districts  the  abandoned  farms  are  more 
numerous  than  the  cultivated. 

Such  unfavorable  economic  conditions  mean  poor  and  insani- 
tary living  conditions,  overwork,  lack  of  recreation,  and  diffi- 
culties in  the  way  of  making  use  of  educational  opportunity. 

Another  region  studied  is,  as  a  whole,  rich  and  flourishing. 
Its  population  is  increasing  rapidly.  Land  values  are  constantly 
rising  everywhere.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  land  of  milk  and  honey,  of 
large,  imposing  farmhouses  and  enormous  barns,  of  beautiful 
automobile  highways  winding  their  way  between  miles  and  miles 
of  apple  trees  and  peach  trees  and  vineyards.  Nearly  every 
farmer  owns  an  automobile,  their  boys  go  to  college  and  their 
girls  go  to  the  various  normal  and  training  schools.  There  is  a 
high  level  of  comfortable  living  and  progressive  Americanism. 
The  village  population  is  largely  made  up  of  retired  farmers, 
who  have  either  leased  their  farms  or  sold  them  and  come  to  the 
village  to  live. 

These  villagers  are  often  wealthy,  owning  several  farms  within 
a  radius  of  five  or  six  miles.  There  are  high  schools  in  the  larger 
villages  and  the  children  of  the  well  to  do  drive  in  from  their 
farms  in  comfortable  carriages  drawn  by  sleek  horses. 

But  in  this  region,  too,  out  from  the  villages,  back  from  the 
fertile  farms,  will  be  found  rocky,  infertile  districts  where 
poverty-stricken  tenant  farmers  find  it  hard  to  make  a  living. 

In  all  but  one  of  the  communities  studied  the  farm  and  its 
work  are  seen  to  be  a  powerful  influence  in  the  child's  life,  espe- 
cially that  of  the  boy.  The  boy  living  in  a  farming  district  is 
expected,  as  soon  as  he  is  big  enough  to  hold  a  hoe,  to  do  his  part 
in  the  work  of  either  his  father 's  or  some  one  else 's  farm. 

Even  where  farmers  are  prosperous  and  farming  pays,  the 
work  the  boy  has  to  do  is  hard  and  lonesome.  If  the  boy  is  at 
work  on  his  father's  farm,  the  father  is  in  no  hurry  to  pay  him 


CORRECTIONAL  AGRICULTURE  301 

wages,  wishes  to  keep  up  the  parental  control  indefinitely,  and 
the  boy  gets  tired  of  it  and  wants  to  get  away. 

Then  somebody  else's  boy  must  be  hired.  And  the  farmer 
is  not  always  considerate  or  reasonable  in  his  treatment  of  him. 
In  the  cases  studied  are  a  number  of  instances  where  a  boy  has 
gone  to  work  for  a  farmer  or  has  been  placed  with  one  by  some 
society  or  institution  and  has  been  badly  overworked  and  misused. 
More  than  once  the  act  of  delinquency  covered  under  the  former 
charge  "incorrigible"  or  "vagrant"  consisted  in  running  away 
from  a  farmer  for  whom  the  boy  was  working.  It  must  not  be 
concluded  that  in  all  these  cases  there  was  misuse  of  the  boy,  but 
it  may  be  assumed  from  the  evidence  at  hand  in  these  instances 
and  others  that  usually  there  was  some  bad  condition  from  which 
the  boy  wished  to  get  away. 

One  of  the  cases  was  that  of  an  eleven-year-old  boy  at  Industry 
who,  before  his  commitment  to  the  institution,  had  been  placed 
with  a  farmer,  but  was  so  abused  by  these  foster  parents  that  he 
was  removed  by  the  truant  officer.  An  interview  with  the  boy 
brought  out  the  fact  that  the  farm  where  he  lived  was  seven  miles 
from  the  village.  When  asked  what  he  did  to  have  a  good  time 
he  replied  that  he  "used  to  plow  and  drag  and  milk  and  go  to 
see  the  boys  evenings."  The  farmer  used  to  whip  him  for  poor 
work  and  also  refused  to  buy  the  necessary  school  books  for 
him. 

Besides  being  hard  on  the  boy  physically,  farm  work  causes 
truancy,  since  there  is  a  constant  inducement  to  keep  the  boy  out 
at  harvest  time  and  at  spring  planting  to  work. 

Farm  work  under  prevailing  conditions  in  the  rural  districts 
is,  then,  not  only  hard  on  the  children  while  they  are  young,  but 
affords  little  opportunity  for  the  future. 

This  evil,  however,  is  becoming  more  and  more  clearly  recog- 
nized, and  plans  of  one  kind  and  another  are  already  being  tried 
in  many  places  for  the  betterment  of  farm  conditions. 

The  one  active  but  disavowed  rival  to  the  church  as  a  social 
center  for  old  and  young  is  the  village  tavern. 

In  some  cases  the  village  itself  is  ' '  dry, ' '  but  any  one  in  search 
of  refreshment  can  easily  find  the  way  to  a  neighboring  town  or 
village  where  rules  are  not  so  strict.  The  tavern  is  the  catchall 
for  every  sort  of  amusement  proscribed  by  the  church  and  the 


302  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

stricter  people  of  the  town.  Here  dances  may  be  given,  here 
there  may  be  a  pool  room  or  bowling  alley,  and  here  sometimes 
may  be  found  rooms  to  let  for  immoral  purposes.  Here  all  the 
gossip  of  the  neighborhood  is  interchanged ;  and  here,  in  the  bar, 
pool  room,  or  bowling  alley,  may  be  found — legally  or  illegally — 
numerous  little  boys  who  learn  to  drink,  smoke,  swear,  steal,  tell 
dirty  stories,  and  amuse  the  adult  crowd  thereby. 

After  so  many  years  of  agitation  the  large  part  drink  plays 
in  all  social  problems  hardly  needs  to  be  stressed.  Perhaps,  after 
all,  it  should  be  stressed,  because  with  the  discovery  of  other 
sources  of  evil  has  come  a  tendency  to  minimize  the  one  about 
which  we  have  heard  so  much.  But  certainly  the  present  investi- 
gation shows  anew  and  decidedly  the  great  harm  done  by  drink, 
not  only  through  tavern  training  of  the  young  but  also  in  making 
parents  and  guardians  cruel  or  idle  or  inefficient,  as  found  in  case 
after  case,  and  creating  those  bad  home  conditions  which  are 
most  favorable  to  the  development  of  juvenile  delinquency. 

No  account  of  social  centers  in  a  country  district  would  be  com- 
plete without  mention  of  the  village  store.  It  is  the  clubhouse 
for  men  and  boys  who  do  not  like  to  go  to  the  length  of  haunting 
the  village  tavern ;  or  for  all,  in  * '  dry ' '  villages  where  no  tavern 
exists.  Here  neighborhood  matters  are  discussed,  personal  af- 
fairs, politics,  the  latest  scandal.  Here  it  may  happen  that 
"racy"  stories  are  told  and  matters  of  sex  held  up  to  indecent 
comment  and  ridicule.  The  store  is  to  a  startling  extent  the 
place  where  social  ideals  are  formed  and  where  the  minds  of 
the  young  are  impregnated  with  the  principles  which  later  will 
govern  their  work  and  play. 

Here,  too,  a  taste  for  gambling  may  be  fostered.  This  is  a  form 
of  recreation  greatly  under  the  ban  of  opinion  in  rural  communi- 
ties, but  as  a  matter  of  fact,  quite  frequently  indulged  in.  It 
may  be  carried  on  in  connection  with  games  of  various  kinds — 
pool,  poker,  and  so  on — entered  into  spontaneously.  But  worthy 
of  special  note  are  cases  mentioned  in  the  investigator's  report 
of  petty  gambling  schemes,  devised  to  play  upon  and  encourage 
the  gambling  instinct,  run  in  connection  with  the  store.  Such 
devices  are  familiar  in  city  neighborhoods  where  they  are  with 
greater  or  less  severity  suppressed  by  the  police.  They  are  no 
doubt  introduced  into  country  districts  in  the  process  of  organ- 


RURAL  POLICE  303 

ization  of  trade  from  some  large  center  which  is  so  characteristic 
a  feature  of  economic  life  to-day. 

Beyond  these  main  centers  of  social  life  there  is  little  in  the 
average  rural  district.  Grange  meetings,  farmers'  picnics,  neigh- 
borhood parties  occur,  but  they  are  few  and  far  between.  The 
great  complaint  of  the  young  people  in  the  country  neighborhood 
is  "nothing  to  do."  This  gap  they  try  to  fill  with  sex  excitement 
and  with  riotous  mischief  that  may  end  in  larceny  and  burglary. 

The  political  unit — the  village  as  a  whole — should  also  be 
doing  some  true  social  work.  One  task  peculiarly  appropriate 
is  the  improvement  of  vocational  opportunities.  Towns  and  vil- 
lages are  already  active  along  this  line  in  the  formation  of  boards 
of  trade  and  other  organizations  intended  to  build  up  business 
in  the  town.  For  the  farmers,  greater  use  of  cooperative  methods 
of  marketing  and  extension  of  rural  credits  will  help. 

The  political  unit  is  also  responsible  for  its  share  in  enacting 
and  enforcing  social  legislation,  and  civic  organization  is  needed 
to  arouse  community  feeling  along  these  lines.  The  evils  of  child 
labor,  of  truancy,  of  drink  can  be  cured  only  when  the'  communi- 
ties themselves  want  them  cured. 

Village  and  town  boards  and  officials  charged  with  the  duty  of 
giving  poor  relief  also  have  a  direct  responsibility  in  the  matter 
of  juvenile  delinquency.  Lack  of  judgment  in  caring  for  a 
dependent  family  may  result  in  the  delinquency  of  the  neglected 
children.  The  official  who  carries  on  such  work  as  this  should 
not  only  realize  his  responsibilities,  but  have  some  adequate  train- 
ing in  the  principle  underlying  social  work. 


B.    BUBAL  POLICE 
RURAL  POLICE  1 

CHARLES  RICHMOND   HENDERSON 

THE  law  is  the  law  of  the  state.  Municipal  corporations  have 
no  original  authority  to  enact  legislation ;  their  ordinances  cannot 
go  beyond  charter  limitations.  The  enforcement  of  law,  the 

*  Adapted  from  Annals  of  the  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social 
Science,  40:230-233.  March,  1912, 


304  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

punishment  of  crime,  the  prevention  of  dangerous  acts  are  all 
functions  of  the  commonwealth.  And  this  with  good  reason :  it 
would  be  intolerable  to  have  an  independent  law-making  au- 
thority set  up  within  the  territory  of  a  state.  No  local  com- 
munity can  be  permitted  to  become  a  nursery  of  criminals,  a  cave 
of  Adullam  serving  as  a  resort  for  dangerous  elements.  Horse 
thieves  and  burglars  will  not  restrict  their  malignant  activity  to 
the  township  of  their  residence.  They  may  even  spare  their 
neighbors  and  live  by  spoiling  persons  at  a  distance. 

The  criminals  of  a  city  go  out  to  plunder  rural  banks  and 
stores.  The  common  interest  does  not  stop  at  city  lines.  The 
common  enemy  must  be  caught  where  he  can  be  overtaken.  The 
recent  extension  of  trolley  lines  into  the  country  and  the  intro- 
duction of  swift  automobiles  have  widened  the  field  for  profes- 
sional burglars  of  cities.  Against  these  trained  villains  the  thin 
safes  of  country  merchants  and  banks  are  mere  tissue  paper. 

The  rural  constabulary  is  no  match  for  city  bred  criminals, 
skillful  in  the  use  of  dynamite  and  electricity,  and  shrewd  in 
studying  the  hours  best  adapted  for  their  exploits.  The  sheriff 
at  the  county  seat  is  a  toy  in  the  hands  of  a  professional  sneak 
thief  or  burglar.  Even  if  he  can  spare  time  from  collecting  the 
fees  which  fall  to  him  as  spoils  of  his  office,  he  has  no  natural 
or  acquired  qualifications  as  a  detective ;  he  is  both  awkward  and 
ignorant.  Local  agents  of  peace  and  justice  have  only  a  local 
knowledge  of  persons  bent  on  crime,  usually  those  who  are  most 
harmless,  stupid  inebriates,  naughty  boys  whose  mothers  have 
neglected  to  spank  them.  Rural  sheriffs  and  constables  know 
nothing  of  sleek,  well  dressed,  polite  criminals  who  reside  in  com- 
fort in  the  city  and  put  up  at  the  best  inn  of  the  country  town 
while  planning  to  rob  a  bank  or  a  merchant 's  cash  drawers.  The 
big,  burly  sheriff  is  a  baby  in  cunning  when  pitted  against  a  wily 
safe-blower  who  from  childhood  has  lived  by  his  wicked  wits  and 
fooled  professional  detectives.  The  rural  officials  are  made  cow- 
ardly by  their  habits  of  life ;  they  know  nothing  of  the  daring 
which  is  characteristic  of  urban  firemen  and  policemen  who  face 
death  daily  and  never  think  of  shrinking.  A  desperate  fellow 
may  dynamite  fish,  contrary  to  law,  in  a  lake  near  a  state  uni- 
versity; but  farmers  and  professors  are  afraid  to  inform,  and 
county  officials  are  too  timid  to  arrest.  State  game  wardens, 


RURAL  POLICE  305 

just  because  they  move  about  on  large  areas,  seem  to  have  some 
influence  on  killing  game  out  of  season,  but  their  organization 
leaves  much  to  be  desired. 

What  is  needed  may  be  inferred  from  the  statement  of  essential 
facts  in  the  situation.  We  need  a  larger  unit  of  police  control ; 
under  our  political  arrangements  the  governor  is  the  natural  head 
of  all  the  forces  of  public  safety.  It  would  be  a  good  beginning 
to  clothe  the  chief  magistrate  of  every  commonwealth  with  au- 
thority to  direct  county  sheriffs  and  to  hold  them  to  strict  account. 
But  a  more  important  measure  would  be  to  furnish  the  governor 
with  a  complete  and  thoroughly  organized  corps  of  detectives, 
plain  clothes  men  and  mounted  police,  under  a  professionally 
trained  chief  responsible  to  the  governor  for  methods  and  results. 
In  the  central  office  would  be  found  an  identification  bureau,  with 
Bertillon  and  finger  print  records,  in  close  and  regular  corre- 
spondence with  the  federal  bureau  of  identification;  and  this 
office  would  furnish  descriptions  at  a  moment's  notice  for  any 
point  in  the  state  or  elsewhere.  The  state  police  force  of  a 
state  would  cooperate  with  those  of  other  states  in  matters  of 
detection,  arrest  and  extradition.  Suspicious  characters  in 
villages  and  cities  would  be  kept  under  espionage  and  plots  would 
be  discovered  and  thwarted.  Of  the  necessary  legal  adjustments 
between  municipal  police,  sheriffs  and  the  state  force  this  is 
not  the  place  to  write.  Such  adjustments  could  easily  be  made  in 
accordance  with  precedents  already  established. 

The  men  of  this  country  owe  it  to  the  wives  and  daughters  of 
farmers  to  provide  for  them  better  protection.  Self-appointed 
patrols  are  not  enough,  and  the  state  ought  not  to  leave  private 
citizens  to  guard  their  own  barns  and  homes.  The  insolence,  the 
fierce  passion  and  the  dangerous  brutality  of  certain  types  of 
negroes  in  the  South  could  be  effectually  curbed  by  a  guard  of 
mounted  police.  It  is  the  hope  of  immunity  which  nurses  sexual 
passion  into  assault.  Animal  impulses  meet  with  their  best 
counter-stimulus  and  inhibition  in  the  frequent  and  unexpected 
appearance  of  alert  and  omnipresent  mounted  policemen. 

Certain  results  may  fairly  be  expected :  In  the  war  with 
crime  it  is  essential  to  make  the  way  of  the  transgressor  as  hard 
as  possible,  and,  at  the  same  time,  open  ways  to  honest  industry. 
Wild  animals  disappear  before  the  hunters  of  civilization.  Gangs 


306  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  criminals  are  like  predatory  animals  and  must  be  harried  and 
watched  until  this  mode  of  living  becomes  unendurable.  Swift 
and  sure  justice  begins  with  a  trained  corps  of  detectives.  All 
admit  that  mobs  and  lyncnings  are  a  disgrace  and  menace  to  our 
civilization.  They  arise  out  of  prolonged  neglect  and  freqeuent 
miscarriage  of  justice.  They  would  diminish  and  disappear  with 
a  well  disciplined  and  effective  rural  police. 


A  LAND  OF  LAW  AND  ORDER  * 

ELMER   E.    FERRIS 

THE  development  of  a  new,  prosperous  country  attracts  the 
adventurous  as  well  -as  the  enterprising.  Young  unmarried  men 
come  West  in  large  numbers.  The  restraints  of  former  home 
life  and  social  customs  are  absent.  Under  such  circumstances 
it  is  easy  to  form  habits  of  drinking  and  gambling  and  to  fall 
into  other  forms  of  moral  looseness.  Personal  safety  and  prop- 
erty rights  are  more  or  less  insecure.  Society  tends  toward  law- 
lessness. 

Such,  however,  is  not  the  case  in  Northwest  Canada.  Quite  to 
the  contrary,  it  is  doubtful  if  there  is  any  country  where  person 
and  property  are  better  protected.  The  Albertan  farmer  was 
right  when  he  said  that  this  is  a  country  of  law  and  order. 

One  must  travel  through  the  country  to  appreciate  it  properly. 
One  finds  himself  in  an  atmosphere  of  respect  for  law.  The 
people  feel  safe.  They  assume  that  the  law  will  be  enforced. 
The  amount  of  crime  and  disorder  that  comes  under  one's  per- 
sonal notice  is  so  small  as  to  be  negligible,  and  one  sees  com- 
paratively little  of  it  in  the  newspapers — at  least  crime  occupies 
a  relatively  insignificant  part  of  their  space. 

The  question  then  arises,  What  makes  it  so?  What  is  there 
about  the  social  organization  and  the  underlying  forces  of  this 
young  civilization  that  gives  it  this  distinctive  feature?  It  is 
evident  that  in  the  thought  of  the  farmer  it  was  largely  due  to  the 
efficiency  of  two  institutions,  the  Royal  Northwest  Mounted 
Police  and  the  courts.  "When  a  man  commits  a  crime  here," 

i  Adapted  from  the  Outlook,  Vol.  98,  685-690,  July  22,  1911. 


RURAL  POLICE  307 

said  he,  ''these  mounted  police  get  after  him,  and  they  land  him." 
Such  is  certainly  the  reputation  of  the  Royal  Northwest  Mounted 
Police.  It  is  an  organization  that  is  unique  among  world-famous " 
constabularies.  It  is  a  body  of  men  numbering  651;  composed 
of  51  officers  and  600  men,  commissioned  officers,  and  constables, 
with  558  horses.  They  police  a  territory  composed  of  the  prov- 
inces of  Alberta,  Saskatchewan,  and  the  extensive  districts  of 
Mackenzie  and  Keewatin,  excluding,  of  course,  the  larger  cities, 
which  have  their  own  constabulary.  The  most  distant  detach- 
ment is  on  the  Arctic  Ocean,  2,500  miles  from  headquarters  at 
Regina — a  distance  that  requires  two  months  to  travel. 

The  entire  force  is  under  the  command  of  Commissioner  A.  B. 
Perry,  with  headquarters  at  Regina.  The  whole  territory  is 
divided  up  into  eight  districts,  each  of  which  is  under  the  charge 
of  a  superintendent  with  headquarters  respectively  at  different 
points  in  the  two  provinces.  At  each  divisional  point  there  are 
barracks,  a  jail,  and  complete  equipment.  There  are  many  duties 
performed  by  the  force  in  addition  to  what  may  be  termed  regular 
police  duties.  They  maintain  the  common  jails,  escort  all  prison- 
ers to  trial  and  those  who  are  convicted  to  the  penitentiary,  attend 
upon  all  criminal  courts,  serve  all  criminal  processes,  escort  luna- 
tics to  the  asylum,  etc.,  etc.  They  also  conduct  important  patrol 
expeditions  through  unsettled  and  unsurveyed  regions,  visit  the 
settlers  once  a  month  in  sparsely  settled  sections,  make  investiga- 
tions and  report  upon  the  condition  of  the  natives,  the  state  of 
immigration,  the  nature  of  the  soil,  crops,  etc.,  in  all  outlying 
regions  that  are  beginning  to  be  settled  up — all  this  in  addition 
to  their  regular  police  duties. 

One  gets  an  idea  of  the  nature  and  amount  of  work  done  in 
the  detection  and  punishment  of  crime  and  the  preservation  of 
order  from  the  report  of  Commissioner  Perry ;  it  shows  for  eleven 
months  of  the  year  1909  that  6,888  cases  of  crimes,  misdemeanors, 
and  petty  offenses  were  handled  by  the  force,  and  that  convic- 
tions resulted  in  5,849  cases,  being  86  per  cent,  of  cases  tried. 
The  special  reports  filed  by  the  divisional  superintendents,  which 
go  into  the  facts  with  more  or  less  detail,  are  full  of  interesting 
cases  showing  the  courage  and  esprit  de  corps  of  the  force. 


308  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

PENNSYLVANIA  STATE  POLICE  * 

THEODORE   ROOSEVELT 

THE  Pennsylvania  State  Police  is  a  model  of  efficiency,  a  model 
of  honesty,  a  model  of  absolute  freedom  from  political  contamina- 
tion. One  of  the  great  difficulties  in  our  large  States  has  been 
to  secure  an  efficient  policing  of  the  rural  sections.  In  communi- 
ties where  there  are  still  frontier  conditions,  such  as  Texas  and 
Arizona,  the  need  has  been  partially  met  by  establishing  bodies 
of  rangers;  but  there  is  no  other  body  so  emphatically  efficient 
for  modern  needs  as  the  Pennsylvania  State  Police.  I  have  seen 
them  at  work.  I  know  personally  numbers  of  the  men  in  the 
ranks.  I  know  some  of  the  officers.  I  feel  so  strongly  about  them 
that  the  mere  fact  that  a  man  is  honorably  discharged  from  this 
Force  would  make  me  at  once,  and  without  hesitation,  employ 
him  for  any  purpose  needing  courage,  prowess,  good  judgment, 
loyalty,  and  entire  trustworthiness.  This  is  a  good  deal  to  say 
of  any  organization,  and  I  say  it  without  qualification  of  the 
Pennsylvania  police. 

The  force  has  been  in  existence  only  ten  years.  It  has  co- 
operated efficiently  with  the  local  authorities  in  detecting  crime 
and  apprehending  criminals.  It  has  efficiently  protected  the 
forests  and  the  wild  life  of  the  State.  It  has  been  the  most 
powerful  instrument  in  enforcing  law  and  order  throughout  the 
State. 

All  appointments  are  made  after  the  most  careful  mental  and 
physical  examination,  and  upon  a  thorough  investigation  of  the 
moral  character,  and  the  past  record,  of  the  man.  All  promo- 
tions have  been  made  strictly  from  the  ranks.  The  drill  is  both 
mounted  and  dismounted.  The  men  are  capital  riders,  good 
shots,  and  as  sound  and  strong  in  body  and  mind  as  in  character. 

This  is  the  force  which  Katherine  Mayo  describes  in  a  volume 
so  interesting,  and  from  the  standpoint  of  sound  American  citi- 
zenship, so  valuable  that  it  should  be  in  every  public  library  and 

1  Adapted  from  the  Introduction,  by  Theodore  Roosevelt,  to  "Justice  for 
All,  the  Story  of  the  Pennsylvania  State  Police,"  by  Katherine  Mayo,  pp. 
8-11.  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  New  York,  (copyright  Katherine  Mayo,  Bed- 
ford Hills,  N.  Y.) 


RURAL  POLICE  309 

every  school  library  in  the  land.  In  the  author's  foreword  the 
murder  of  gallant  young  Howell,  and  the  complete  breakdown 
of  justice  in  reference  thereto  under  our  ordinary  rural  police 
system,  makes  one 's  blood  boil  with  anger  at  the  folly  and  timid- 
ity of  our  people  in  tamely  submitting  to  such  hideous  condi- 
tions, and  gives  us  the  keenest  gratitude  to  the  founder  of  the 
Pennsylvania  State  Police.  This  was  a  case  of  ordinary  crime, 
in  which  the  sheriff  and  county  constable  were  paralyzed  by  fear 
of  a  band  of  gunmen.  Other  forms  of  crime  are  dealt  with  in 
connection  with  industrial  disturbances.  The  author  shows  how 
until  the  State  Police  Force  was  established  the  State,  in  times 
of  strikes,  permitted  the  capitalists  to  furnish  their  own  Coal 
and  Iron  Police,  thus  selling  her  police  power  to  one  of  the  con- 
tending parties,  that  of  the  vested  interests. 

The  author  also  shows  how  after  the  establishment  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania State  Police  this  intolerable  condition  was  ended ;  local 
demagogues  and  foolish  or  vicious  professional  labor  leaders  in 
their  turn  attacked  the  Pennsylvania  State  Police  with  the  foul- 
est slander  and  mendacity,  because  it  did  impartial  justice.  The 
prime  lesson  for  all  true  friends  of  labor  to  learn  is  that  law  and 
order  must  be  impartially  preserved  by  the  State  as  a  basis  for 
securing  justice  through  the  State's  action.  Justice  must  be 
done ;  but  the  first — not  only  the  first,  but  a  vital  first — step  to- 
wards realizing  it  must  be  action  by  the  State,  through  its  own 
agents,  not  by  authority  delegated  to  others,  whereby  lawless  vio- 
lence is  summarily  stopped.  The  labor  leader  who  attacks  the 
Pennsylvania  State  Police  because  it  enforces  the  law  would,  if 
successful  in  the  long  run,  merely  succeed  in  reentrenching  in 
power  the  lawless  capitalists  who  used  the  law-defying  Coal  and 
Iron  Police. 

No  political  influence  or  other  influence  avails  to  get  a  single 
undesirable  man  on  the  Force,  or  to  keep  a  man  on  the  Force  who 
has  proved  himself  unfit.  I  am  informed  and  I  fully  believe, 
that  not  a  single  appointment  has  ever  been  made  for  political 
reasons.  The  efficiency  with  which  the  Force  does  its  duty  is  ex- 
traordinary. Any  man  who  sees  the  troopers  patrolling  the 
country  can  tell  from  the  very  look  of  the  men  what  invaluable 
allies  they  are  to  the  cause  of  law  and  order.  In  the  year  1915 
the  force  made  3,027  arrests  and  secured  2,348  convictions — 80 


310  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

per  cent,  of  convictions.  The  men  are  so  trained  and  schooled 
in  the  criminal  laws  of  the  State  that  they  know  just  what  evi- 
dence is  necessary.  They^deal  admirably  with  riots.  Perhaps 
there  is  nothing  that  they  do  better  than  the  protection  of  women 
in  sparsely  populated  neighborhoods.  Small  wonder  that  the 
criminal  and  disorderly  classes  dread  them  and  eagerly  hope  for 
their  disbanding! 

Year  by  year  the  efficiency  of  the  force  has  increased  and  its 
usefulness  has  correspondingly  increased.  All  good  citizens  in 
Pennsylvania  should  heartily  support  the  Pennsylvania  State 
Police.  The  sooner  all  our  other  States  adopt  similar  systems, 
the  better  it  will  be  for  the  cause  of  law  and  order,  and  for  the 
upright  administration  of  the  laws  in  the  interests  of  justice 
throughout  the  Union. 


CANADA'S  ROYAL  NORTH-WEST  MOUNTED  POLICE1 

AGNES   DEAN    CAMERON 

THE  Royal  North- West  Mounted  Police,  a  handful  of  men  less 
than  a  thousand  in  number,  maintain  order  over  an  extent  of 
country  as  large  as  Continental  Europe  and  do  their  work  so 
well  that  life  and  property  are  safer  on  the  banks  of  the  Atha- 
basca and  on  Lesser  Slave  Lake  than  they  are  to-day  in  many 
crowded  corners  of  London  and  Liverpool.  How  largely  looms 
the  individual  in  this  vast  land  of  Canada,  this  map  that  is  half 
unrolled !  Men,  real  men,  count  for  more  here  than  they  do  in 
Old  World  crowded  centers. 

This  is  the  most  wonderful  body  of  mounted  men  in  the  world. 
Surely  more  individuality  goes  into  the  make-up  of  this  force 
than  into  any  other ;  it  is  a  combination  of  all  sorts  of  men  drawn 
together  by  the  winds  of  heaven.  Five  years  ago  the  roll-call  of 
one  division  disclosed  an  ex-midshipman ;  a  son  of  the  governor 
of  a  British  colony ;  a  medical  student  from  Dublin ;  a  grandson 
of  a  captain  of  the  line :  a  Cambridge  B.A. ;  three  ex-troopers  of 
the  Scots  Greys;  the  brother  of  a  Yorkshire  baronet,  and  a 
goodly  sprinkling  of  the  ubiquitous  Scots.  For  years  a  son  of 

i  Adapted  from  Littell's  Living  Age,  276:  658,659,  March  8,  1913. 


RURAL  POLICE  311 

Charles  Dickens  did  valiant  service  with  this  force,  and  has  left 
behind  him  a  book  (as  yet  unpublished),  "Seven  Years  Without 
Beer!  " 

Far  back  in  the  year  1670  another  body  of  men  dominated 
Canada,  the  staunch  Scottish  servants  and  officers  of  the  Ancient 
and  Honorable  Hudson's  Bay  Company  whose  character-mark 
for  loyalty  and  fair  dealing  remains  indelible  on  the  early  pages 
of  the  history  of  this  land.  The  charter  which  was  granted  to 
them  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II  had  run  for  two  hundred  years 
and  expired  in  1870,  leaving  all  Canada  west  of  the  Great  Lakes 
in  a  condition  of  readjustment  and  unrest. 

Illicit  whisky-dealers,  horse-thieves,  and  smugglers  poured 
into  Western  Canada  from  the  United  States  to  the  south  over 
the  invisible  and  unguarded  parallel  of  forty-nine  degrees,  and 
Canadian  Indians  and  Canadian  interests  needed  protection. 
This  condition  of  affairs  was  the  immediate  cause  of  the  forma- 
tion of  the  R.  N.  W.  M.  P.  in  the  early  seventies,  the  launching 
of  the  project  and  the  forming  of  the  force  being  the  pet  scheme 
of  the  then  premier,  Sir  John  A.  Macdonald. 

The  300  charter-members  of  the  Mounted  Police  had  their  work 
cut  out  for  them  in  the  early  days  on  this  far  frontier  where 
cupidity  and  lawlessness  reigned  and  no  law  of  God  or  man  had 
previously  been  enforced  north  or  south  of  this  part  of  the  inter- 
national boundary  line.  The  profit  to  the  American  "wolfers" 
had  been  great  and  was  measured  not  in  dollars  but  largely  in 
buffalo-robes  and  sometimes  in  squaws.  The  traders  from  the 
United  States  brought  bad  whisky  and  worse  ammunition  and 
fire-arms  to  the  Canadian  Indians  and  for  their  own  gain  en- 
couraged tribal  wars  and  the  stealing  of  horses. 

In  the  forty  years  of  its  existence  the  R.  N.  W.  M.  P.  has  closely 
identified  itself  with  the  growing  history  of  Western  Canada, 
being  the  greatest  moral  ally  to  every  creative  factor  of  the 
country's  growth. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

CORRECTIONAL  AGRICULTURE 

Cooley,   H.    R.     Correction   Farm   of    Cleveland.     Annals,   46 : 92-96, 

March,  1913. 
Farm  Colony:     Our  Experiment  in  Cleveland,  Proceedings  National 


312  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction,  1912,  pp.  191-195,  315 
Plymouth  Court,  Chicago,  111. 

Elwood,  Everett  S.  Mental  defect  in  relation  to  alcohol  with  some 
notes  on  colonies  for  alcoholic  offenders.  Proceedings  National 
Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction,  1914,  pp.  306-314. 

Fernald,  W.  E.  Massachusetts  Farm  Colony  for  the  Feebleminded. 
Proceedings  National  Conference  Charities  and  Correction,  1902, 
pp.  487-490. 

Goodyear,  Anna  F.  Description  of  German  and  other  labor  Colonies, 
beneficient  and  penal,  showing  what  we  can  do  with  our  abundant 
land.  Old  Corner  Book  Store,  Boston,  1899. 

Jackson,  F.  J.  Farm  Treatment  of  Misdemeanants.  Proceedings  Na- 
tional Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction,  1911,  pp.  70-72. 

Royaard,  A.  Farms  for  the  City  Poor.  Craftsman,  25 : 168-177,  No- 
vember, 1913. 

Famous   penitentiary   sanatorium   at   Witzwil.     Amer.   Rev.   of   Re- 
views, 54 :  441-442,  October,  1916. 

Haggard,  Sir  H.  Rider.  The  Poor  and  the  Land;  being  a  report  on 
the  Salvation  Army  colonies  in  the  United  States  and  at  Had- 
leigh,  England,  Avith  scheme  of  national  land  settlement  and  an 
introduction,  p.  157,  Longmans,  N.  Y.,  1905. 

Potts,  C.  S.  The  State  Farm  System  in  Texas.  Proceedings  National 
Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction,  1914,  pp.  54-61. 

Scott,  E.  L.  Municipal  Correction  Farms.  American  City,  15 :  623- 
630,  December,  1916. 

Whittaker,  W.  H.  Industrial  Farm.  Proceedings  National  Confer- 
ence Charities  and  Correction,  1914,  pp.  45-48. 

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Cameron,    A.    D.     Riders    of   the    Plains.     Living    Age,    276:656-63, 

March  15,  1913. 
Ferriss,  E.  E.     Land  of  Law  and  Order.     Outlook,  98 :  685-93,  July, 

1911. 
Haydon,  A.  L.     Riders  of  the  Plains.     Nation,  92:425-6,  April  27, 

1911. 

Henderson,  C.  R.     Rural  Police.     Annals,  40:228-233,  March,  1912. 
Lewis,  C.  F.     The  Tramp  Problem.     Annals,  40 :  217-28,  March,  1912. 
Mayo,  Katherine.     Justice  to  All.     The  story  of  the  Pennsylvania  State 

Police.     Putnam,  N.  Y.,  1917. 
Mott,  L.     Day's  Work  in   the   Mounted   Police.     Outing,   48:96-100, 

April,  1906. 
Ogden,  G.  W.     Watch  on  the  Rio  Grande.     Everybody's,  25 :  353-65, 

September,  1911. 

State  Constabulary.     Nation,  98:  5-6,  Jan.,  1914. 

State  Constabularies  Needed.     Outlook,  106 : 145-6,  January  24,  1914. 
Thompson,  H.  C.     Canadian  Northwest  Mounted  Police.     Outing,  32: 

75-80,  April,  1898. 


CHAPTEE  XII 
A.    THE  BUBAL  HOME 
WOMEN  ON  THE  FARMS1 

HERBERT   QUICK 

MY  explorations  of  the  souls  of  farmers,  backed  by  my  own  life 
on  a  farm,  and  the  lives  my  mother,  sisters,  aunts,  cousins,  and 
women  neighbors  lived,  lead  me  to  the  conclusion  that  the  "  drift 
to  the  cities"  has  been  largely  a  woman  movement.  I  have  found 
the  men  on  farms  much  more  contented  and  happy  than  the 
women.  My  mother  wanted  my  father  to  leave  the  farm,  and 
move  to  a  college  town  where  the  children  could  have  "a  better 
chance. ' '  He  did  not  accede  to  her  wishes ;  and  one  bit  of  spirit- 
ual drift  was  checked.  But  just  to  the  degree  that  farmers  have 
reached  the  plane  of  letting  the  wife  and  daughter  vote  on  the 
future  of  the  family,  they  have  been  pushed  toward  the  city. 
Out  on  broad  cattle-ranges  I  have  found  the  men  and  boys  filled 
with  the  traditional  joy  of  open  spaces  and  the  freedom  of  spirit 
which  goes  with  it ;  but  in  many,  many  cases,  their  women  were 
pining  for  neighbors,  for  domestic  help,  for  pretty  clothes,  for 
schools,  music,  art,  and  the  things  tasted  when  the  magazines 
came  in. 

There  is  a  movement  for  better  things  among  the  farmers' 
wives  of  the  land.  There  is  a  new  organization  on  an  interna- 
tional scale.  There  are  questioning  and  revolt  and  progress  in 
the  rural  homes.  This  idea  is  finding  recognition  among  them: 
that  all  the  prizes  of  progress  are  no  longer  to  be  allowed  to  go 
to  the  man-life  on  the  farm,  while  the  woman-life  is  left  to 
vegetate. 

I  spent  a  day  in  a  New  England  neighborhood  recently,  and 
at  the  sight  of  the  old  stone  walls  which  divide  field  from  field, 
iny  prairie-bred  back  ached,  and  my  fingers  bled  in  spirit  at  the 

i  Adapted  from  Good  Housekeeping,  Vol.  57:  426-36,  Oct.,  1913. 

313 


314  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

thought  of  the  awful  labors  of  the  farmers  of  old  who  dug  those 
stones,  carried  them  off  the  land,  and  aligned  them  in  those  old 
fences.  But  progress  came  along  and  emancipated  the  man.  He 
found  that  it  paid  to  abandon  the  stonefields  and  work  the  richer, 
kinder  Western  lands  with  machinery.  He  could  make  more 
money  by  the  use  of  tools  on  which  he  rode.  It  became  profitable 
to  thresh  by  steam,  harvest  by  horse-power,  put  the  corn  in  the 
soil  by  machinery,  bind  the  grain  with  twine  and  hoe  with  a  horse- 
drawn  machine.  To  handle  manure  with  a  fork  does  not  pay 
when  it  can  be  spread  by  means  of  a  machine.  Potatoes  are 
sliced,  dropped,  dug,  cleaned,  and  elevated  into  wagons  by  ma- 
chines. Tomato  plants,  cabbage  plants,  and  the  like  are  planted 
by  machines. 

The  farmer  has  come  to  be  a  man  who  operates  machines,  and 
his  life  is  made  more  interesting  and  easeful  thereby.  There  is 
still  a  great  deal  of  hard  drudgery  in  his  life,  but  progress  and 
invention  have  been  busy  in  relieving  him  of  that  dreadful  bur- 
den under  which  our  farming  ancestors  bowed,  grunted,  and 
sweated.  The  internal-combustion  engine,  while  it  has  trans- 
formed the  lives  of  so  many  city  people  through  the  motor-car, 
has  become  the  chore-boy  and  handy-man  of  the  farm. 

But  all  these  improvements  have  come  into  the  life  of  the  man 
on  the  farm  because  they  have  been  profitable.  I  do  not  know 
of  one  which  the  American  farmer  has  generally  adopted  merely 
because  it  gave  him  ease.  He  has  not  spared  himself.  He  has 
been  emancipated  in  large  measure  because  the  easier  ways  of 
doing  things  have  promised  better  pay  for  his  labor. 

And  here  is  where  the  farm  woman  has  not  received  a  fair 
deal  in  the  partnership.  Not  that  she  has  been  entirely  without 
relief  from  the  march  of  progress.  The  wind-mill,  or  the  gas- 
engine  which  pumps  water  for  the  live  stock,  also  saves  her  the 
back-breaking  carry  from  the  spring-house  which  sent  our  mothers 
to  town  invalids,  or  made  their  lives  a  burden.  The  invention 
of  the  cream-separator  and  the  establishment  of  the  creamery 
have  freed  woman  from  some  of  the  drudgery  of  the  old-fashioned 
dairy. 

The  farm  woman  no  longer  makes  cheese,  because  the  cheese- 
factory  can  do  it  better  and  more  cheaply.  The  introduction  of 
labor-saving  machinery  has  decreased  the  number  of  ravenous 


THE  RURAL  HOME  315 

mouths  which  she  must  satiate  with  food.  The  steam-thresher, 
carrying  its  own  cook  and  crew,  saves  her  the  labors  of  serving 
hordes  of  threshers. 

These  things  helped  her  because  they  were  introduced  as  profit- 
able innovations,  and  not  as  woman-saving  ones.  More  ameliora- 
ions  of  woman-life  on  the  farm  will  come  in  for  the  same  economic 
reason.  In  many  parts  of  the  country  women  milk  the  cows ;  but 
the  next  development  is  sure  to  take  the  form  of  the  general 
adoption  of  mechanical  milkers.  These  machines  are  being  thor- 
oughly tried  out,  and  where  twenty  or  more  cows  are  kept  in  a 
herd,  the  milking-machines  pay.  Therefore  they  will  be  adopted ; 
and  thereby  both  women  and  men  will  be  able  to  lead  easier  and 
fuller  lives  of  greater  happiness  on  the  farms. 

The  present  woman  movement  on  the  farm  is  toward. a  higher 
plane  than  the  economic  plane.  It  is  a  demand  for  happiness  and 
ease  and  the  fruits  of  progress  in  the  house,  as  well  as  out  of  it. 

In  brief,  the  farm  woman  is  now  demanding,  and  receiving,  bet- 
ter things  in  the  order  of  their  nearness  to  her  daily  life — first, 
things  in  the  house  for  her  housekeeping;  secondly,  things  in 
the  house  for  her  children's  happier  and  fuller  home  life;  and 
thirdly,  things  outside  the  house,  in  the  neighborhood,  for  the 
better  and  fuller  community  life  of  herself,  her  children,  her  hus- 
band, and  her  neighbors.  This  is  the  outline  of  the  rural  uplift 
which  is  gathering  force  every  day. 

Millions  of  farmers'  wives  do  their  own  housework.  The 
problem  of  domestic  help  is  more  difficult  on  the  farm  than  in  the 
city.  They  care  for  their  children — and  their  families  average 
larger,  I  am  sure,  than  do  the  families  of  city  women.  They 
have  been  emancipated  to  a  large  degree  by  the  factory  system 
from  the  task  of  making  the  clothes  of  their  families;  but  they 
still  make  their  own  clothes,  in  the  main,  and  much  of  the 
clothing  of  their  families.  They  cook,  cure  meats,  make  sausages, 
bake  their  own  bread  and  pastry,  churn,  make  butter,  tend  gar- 
dens, and  once  in  a  while  lend  a  hand  in  the  haying,  or  other 
out-door  work.  The  women  of  the  cities  complain  that  they  have 
lost  their  economic  usefulness  in  the  household,  and  demand  a 
share  in  the  productive  work  of  the  world.  No  such  wail  ever 
arises  from  the  women  of  the  farm.  Their  hands  are  full  of 
necessary  and  productive  work  from  morning  till  night. 


316  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY       . 

In  a  large  measure  this  work  is  done  without  the  modern  aids 
to  housework  which  city  women  possess.  If  a  vote  could  be  taken 
of  the  farmers '  wives  of  the  nation  as  to  the  improvement  in  the 
house  most  generally  needed,  I  think  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  referendum  would  be  overwhelmingly  to  the  effect  that  the 
first  great  need  is  running  water  in  the  house !  And  this  is  the 
first  concession  to  progress  that  farm  women  are  getting.  Mil- 
lions of  them  have  no  cisterns,  and  the  simple  first  step  toward  a 
parity  of  women's  work  with  men's  is  to  put  a  cistern  of  soft 
water  in  commission,  with  a  pump  plying  into  a  kitchen  sink. 
The  next  thing  is  a  water-back  to  the  kitchen  range,  and  a  faucet 
of  hot,  water.  These  lead  directly  to  a  washing-machine  for  the 
laundry  work. 

Not  in  words,  but  in  deeds,  and  still  more  in  thoughts,  the  in- 
sistent need  of  emancipation  from  drudgery  is  making  itself  felt 
in  rural  homes.  Not  in  words,  but  in  spirit,  these  things  are 
appearing  in  the  current  thought  of  American  rural  life.  It 
pays  to  make  the  women  happy.  It  pays  to  emancipate  slaves, 
and  especially  when  those  slaves  are  our  wives,  our  mothers,  our 
daughters.  It  pays  in  money,  indirectly,  if  not  directly;  but 
whether  or  not  it  pays  in  money,  it  must  be  done.  Any  farm 
that  can  afford  a  silo  can  afford  a  bathroom  and  a  septic-tank 
sewage-disposal  system.  Any  farm  that  can  afford  a  cream 
separator  can  afford  a  washing  machine.  Any  farm  that  can 
support  pumping  and  storage  facilities  for  the  live  stock  can 
afford  running  water,  hot  and  cold,  in  the  house.  Any  farm  that 
can  maintain  a  manure  spreader  can  afford  an  acetylene,  gaso- 
line, blaugas,  or  electric  lighting  system.  Any  farm  that  can 
afford  self-feeders  for  the  cattle  can  afford  vacuum  cleaners  and 
electric  labor-saving  devices  for  the  women.  Any  farm  that  can 
justify  binders,  silage-cutters,  hay-forks,  pumping  engines,  shred- 
ders, side-delivery  rakes,  corn  harvesters,  potato  planters,  and 
finely  equipped  barns  can  afford  every  modern  convenience  for 
making  the  home  a  good  place  for  women  to  live,  work,  rear  chil- 
dren, and  develop  in  them  the  love  for  farm  life. 

A  corn-shredder  or  a  silo  costs  more  than  an  electric  lighting 
system  for  the  farm  home — a  system  which  will  give  the  women 
all  the  things  that  city  women  receive  in  the  way  of  electric 


THE  RURAL  HOME  317 

service.  A  modern  hog-house,  a  thoroughly  good  set  of  poultry 
buildings,  a  concrete  feeding  floor,  an  improved  equipment  of 
stanchions  for  the  dairy  barn,  or  a  good  bull  to  head  the  herd,  is 
not  much,  if  any,  less  expensive  than  a  system  of  water-works  for 
the  house,  which  places  water  under  pressure  in  the  bathroom, 
kitchen,  and  bedrooms. 

Let  no  one  understand  from  what  I  say  here  that  the  condi- 
tions of  work  and  living  which  weigh  down  upon  millions  of  farm 
women,  and  which  account  for  much  of  the  prevailing  discontent 
with  farm  life,  have  caused,  or  will  result  in,  much  of  that  sex 
revolt  which  is  so  much  talked  of  in  feminist  circles  all  over  the 
world.  The  farmer 's  wife  is  not  discontented  with  her  husband, 
nor  with  his  treatment  of  her.  She  may  even  in  many  cases 
throw  the  weight  of  her  vote  against  the  expenditures  necessary 
to  emancipate  her  from  unnecessa^  drudgery.  To  her  the  mort- 
gage on  the  farm  is  a  nightmare  as  baleful  as  it  is  to  her  husband. 
She  knows  her  husband 's  business,  and  is  as  solicitous  as  he  is  for 
management  which  will  bring  profits. 

But  there  is  a  woman  here  and  a  woman  there  who  sees  that 
the  whole  scheme  of  family  life  falls  to  ruin  if  the  home  suffers 
in  comparison  with  homes  of  those  friends  and  relatives  who  live 
on  wages  in  the  towns.  She  and  her  husband  begin  to  realize 
that  it  does  not  pay  to  build  the  farm  up  into  a  profitable  prop- 
erty which  is  despised  by  the  very  children  for  whom  they  are 
giving  their  lives.  And  they  are  studying  statistics,  too.  They 
find  that  such  facts  as  have  been  compiled  by  Dr.  Otis,  of  Wis- 
consin, establish  the  fact  that  farms  pay  just  in  proportion  to 
the  amount  of  the  farm  value  which  is  invested  in  equipment, 
rather  than  in  mere  land.  And  myriads  of  farmers  are  fore- 
warned by  their  wives'  discontent  with  farm  life  that  a  crisis 
is  approaching  in  which  the  decision  will  have  to  be  made  between 
removing  the  family  to  town  or  bringing  the  things  of  the  town 
to  the  family. 

When,  however,  the  tired  and  harassed  farm  wife  comes  to 
the  point  of  asking  herself  whether  it  is  worth  while  to  stay  on 
the  farm,  she  thinks  secondarily  of  the  disadvantages  of  work 
and  living  which  have  frazzled  her  nerves  and  depressed  her 
spirits.  She  thinks  first  of  her  children.  That  is  the  Eternal 


318  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Mother.  She  finds  that  the  children  are,  in  most  parts  of  the 
country,  deprived  of  the  school  advantages  and  social  advan- 
tages which  the  city  gives  even  to  the  slum-dweller. 

The  American  farm  women  constitute  our  largest  class  of  eco- 
nomically useful  women.  This  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  mar- 
riage is  regarded  as  a  burden  by  the  poor  man  in  the  city,  but  is 
almost  a  necessity  for  the  poor  man  who  owns  and  works  a  farm. 
The  poultry  products  of  the  nation  are  worth  as  much  as  the 
cotton  crop,  exceed  the  wheat  crop  by  four  hundred  millions  of 
dollars  yearly,  and  are  worth  more  than  the  combined  values 
of  the  oat,  rye,  barley,  and  potato  crops.  This  enormous  product, 
if  lost  to  us,  would  be  felt  ruinously  at  once  in  increased  cost  of 
living.  It  must  be  credited  mainly  to  the  woman  of  the  farm. 
For  she  it  is  who  produces  nine-tenths  of  the  poultry  products — 
the  fowls  and  eggs — of  the  nation.  Give  her  credit  also  for  but- 
ter, cheese,  vegetables,  pickles,  preserves,  and  a  thousand  other 
things.  Allow  her,  too,  her  share  in  preparing  the  means  for 
men  who  grow  the  rest  of  the  food  for  us,  and  for  keeping  their 
houses. 

Remember  also  that  she  bears  our  sturdiest  children  while  she 
helps  to  feed  us  all.  And  then  ask  yourself  who  has  done  any- 
thing for  the  farm  woman?  She  has  been  left  to  shift  for  her- 
self, and  must  still  do  so.  She  still  bakes  her  own  bread;  she 
still  scrubs  her  own  floors.  She  washes  her  own  dishes ;  she  cans 
and  preserves  and  dries  her  own  fruit  and  vegetables.  She  has 
bent  faithfully,  dutifully,  uncomplainingly  over  these  appointed 
tasks  while,  to  the  rhythmic  swing  of  its  pounding  machinery, 
the  march  of  modernity  has  borne  class  after  class  out  beyond 
her.  On  her  rests  the  burden  of  emancipating  herself  from  the 
things  that  weigh  upon  her  life;  and  she  is  rising  nobly  to  the 
task. 

There  are  clubs  and  societies  already  formed  and  forming. 
Thousands  of  farm  women  are  making  up  their  minds  that  their 
sisters  who  have  abandoned  the  farm  and  farm  life  have  deserted 
the  field  on  which  they  should  have  fought  and  triumphed. 
They  are  studying,  where  they  formerly  succumbed ;  and  advanc- 
ing, where  they  formerly  retreated.  There  is  revolt  in  the  air 
against  counsels  of  submission  and  fatalistic  retreat.  The  twen- 
tieth century  is  to  see  a  renaissance  of  farm  life.  And  the  women 


THE  RURAL  HOME  319 

who  formerly  led  the  fight  are  to  head  the  counter-charge  for 
better  things  on  the  farms. 


AN  OPEN  LETTER  TO  SECRETARY  HOUSTON  1 

FROM  A  FARMER'S  WIFE 

MARY  DOANE  SHELBY 

I  THINK  that  I  must  tell  you  first  that  country  living  is  com- 
paratively new  to  me.  To  my  four  years  of  life  on  a  farm  I 
have  a  background  of  many  years  of  city  life,  during  which  I  did 
the  strenuous  things  which  women  of  leisure  are  apt  to  do  to-day. 
In  the  midst  of  these  activities  a  great  doctor  told  my  husband 
that  he  was  in  a  bad  way  physically  and  must  henceforward  lead 
an  out-of-doors  life.  It  was  decided  that  we  should  try  farming. 
Health  was  the  first  consideration  in  the  selection  of  our  new 
home,  but  we  must  make  the  enterprise  a  paying  investment. 
We  chose  a  beautiful  stock  farm  in  the  foothills  of  the  Ozarks, 
in  a  sparsely  settled  neighborhood  which  had  had  no  newcomers 
for  years. 

The  roads  are  poor.  When  crops  fail,  our  neighbors  accept 
the  situation  philosophically  and  keep  their  families  in  food  by 
cutting  timber  and  hewing  railway  ties.  They  are  a  simple 
people  whose  wants  are  easily  satisfied.  They  know  little  of  the 
outside  world  save  as  an  adventurous  son  or  daughter  has  left 
home  to  seek  employment  as  a  streetcar  conductor  or  domestic 
servant.  Their  forebears  have  lived  here  for  nearly  a  hundred 
years.  While  their  opportunities  for  "book  learning"  have  been 
incredibly  meager,  they  come  of  such  fine  stock  that  the  lack  of  a 
formal  education  serves  to  emphasize  native  ability.  I  feel  very 
modest  when  I  am  with  them. 

Within  a  radius  of  ten  miles  I  am  familiar  with  family  con- 
ditions. Unless  the  mother  is  still  a  young  woman,  one  finds  from 
seven  to  sixteen  children  in  each  household.  I  have  given  the 
two  extremes.  I  humbly  confess  that  I  fall  below  a  fair  city 
average  in  this  regard.  With  this  exception,  and  the  fact  that 
I  have  more  material  possessions,  my  problem  and  my  neighbors' 

i  Adapted  from  the  Outlook,  Vol.  Ill,  923-5,     Dec.  15,  1915. 


320  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

as  women  trying  to  make  a  home  in  a  promising  but  undeveloped 
farming  community  are  the  same. 

What  does  every  home-maker  want  primarily  ?  Health,  and  a 
chance  at  the  higher  life  for  her  family — an  education  for  her 
children. 

The  farmer's  wife  should  find  these  things  possible  to  attain. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  are  out  of  reach  of  most  of  the  women 
of  this  neighborhood.  The  reason  for  this,  I  believe — and  here  is 
a  conclusion  which  surprised  me — is  that  the  Government  does 
not  give  the  country  woman  the  protection  which  the  city  woman 
receives  and  which  she  should  have  if  she  is  to  be  the  economic 
factor  in  the  National  life  which  she  will  become  if  she  intelli- 
gently follows  the  path  marked  out  for  her  by  your  Department. 

Of  late,  when  I  have  been  reading  your  bulletins  on  sanitation, 
Mr.  Secretary,  I  have  been  reminded  of  Moses.  He  had  probably 
given  the  Children  of  Israel  such  instruction  with  regard  to 
matters  pertaining  to  health  before  he  realized  the  necessity  of 
putting  his  farm  bulletins  into  law.  It  is  to  remind  you  of  this 
that  I  am  writing  you  now. 

On  a  neighboring  farm,  where  the  barns  are  not  far  from  the 
house,  there  is  a  large  pile  of  stable  manure.  It  has  been  stand- 
ing there  for  weeks.  My  neighbor's  wife  knows  why  she  has  so 
many  flies;  she  also  knows  the  menace  to  health.  Her  husband 
knows  too.  Your  information  has  reached  them.  But  it  seems 
that  at  the  present  time  there  is  no  available  field  for  this  fertil- 
izer ;  no  man  and  team  to  haul  it ;  sometime  it  will  be  attended  to ; 
just  now  "he"  is  busy  with  other  work.  The  city  man  would  be 
prevented  by  law  from  thus  jeopardizing  the  health  of  those 
around  him.  The  farmer  is  permitted  to  dally  with  the  situation. 

Why  could  there  not  be  rural  health  departments  to  insure 
sanitary  conditions?  The  farmer  and  his  family  are  said  to  be 
National  assets.  Why  not  protect  them?  The  forest  has  its 
rangers;  conservation  of  forces  would  suggest  a  like  protection 
for  farm  folk. 

Another  neighbor  is  permitted  to  let  the  drainage  from  his 
farm  buildings  pollute  his  water  supply.  Why  not  have  build- 
ing restrictions  for  the  farm  ? 

At  our  annual  "graveyard  cleaning/'  when  the  valley  people 
meet  at  the  burying-ground  next  the  school-house,  every  family 


THE  RURAL  HOME  321 

has  its  little  mounds  from  which  the  father  cuts  the  long  grass 
and  weeds,  and  over  which  the  mother  allows  herself  time  for 
the  luxury  of  tears.  A  conference  with  our  overworked  country 
doctors  would  reveal  the  many  causes  for  a  high  death  rate  in 
naturally  healthy  regions.  The  city  slogan  "save  the  babies" 
might  well  be  extended  to  the  country. 

I  will  frankly  confess  that  I  had  much  more  reason  for  confi- 
dence in  the  milk  which  I  used  to  buy  in  bottles  in  the  city  than 
I  have  now  that  it  comes  from  our  own  cows.  I  have  obtained 
tolerable  conditions  through  strikes  and  boycotts,  refusing  for 
days  to  accept  milk  until  the  stables  were  properly  cleaned. 
That  I  have  been  successful  in  these  hazardous  domestic  enter- 
prises is  entirely  due  to  my  family's  sense  of  humor,  which  has 
never  yet  failed  me.  I  could  not  advise  my  neighbors  to  resort 
to  my  methods,  although  their  need  is  greater  than  my  own.  I 
am  sure  the  course  pursued  by  Moses  would  be  better  for  family 
tranquillity. 

It  is  a  usual  thing,  when  the  summer  exodus  comes,  for  the 
newspapers  and  family  physicians  to  warn  city  people  of  the 
probability  of  finding  contaminated  water  and  unsanitary  con- 
ditions generally  in  the  country.  There  seems  to  have  been  little 
thought  of  the  helplessness  of  the  women  and  children  who  are 
compelled  to  live  (or  die)  in  those  regions.  One  must  conclude 
from  the  universal  warning  that  the  problem  is  a  National  one, 
calling  for  new  legislation  and  its  enforcement. 

I  have  mentioned  our  roads.  In  certain  stretches  they  are 
tragically,  laughably,  hysterically  rocky.  In  other  stretches  they 
are  punctuated  with  stumps.  Few  women  would  venture  to  drive 
a  team  over  them  for  any  distance,  although  the  men,  through 
practice  in  driving,  are  able  to  cover  the  rough  miles  at  a  remark- 
ably good  gait. 

It  is  a  matter  of  record  that  on  the  ground  of  bad  roads  alone 
the  Government  has  so  far  refused  our  community  free  rural 
delivery,  although  there  are  many  men  who  could  easily  qualify 
as  carriers,  covering  the  territory  in  the  time  required  by  the 
Government  and  serving  ninety  families  three  times  a  week. 
Don't  you  think,  Mr.  Secretary,  that  bad  roads  are  a  very  good 
reason  for  having  a  free  delivery  of  mail?  Isn't  it  better  for 
one  responsible  man  to  go  over  the  road  than  that  ninety  families 


322  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

should  have  to  send  for  their  mail  or  go  without?  I  am  not 
speaking  for  Big  Hawk  Valley  alone.  In  these  stretches  of 
country  where  money  is  not  plentiful,  and  where  the  farmers  and 
their  wives  are  dependent  upon  their  own  physical  exertions  for 
everything  necessary  for  living,  Governmental  and  newspaper 
urging  doesn't  take  us  very  far  on  our  way  toward  good  roads. 
When  we  shall  have  automobile  roads  we  shall  not  need  rural 
delivery.  In  the  meantime  we  are  paying  our  taxes  and  are 
really  a  part  of  the  United  States  of  America,  although  we  should 
hardly  realize  it  save  for  sentimental  attachments. 

Since  I  have  been  living  in  Big  Hawk  Valley,  Mr.  Secretary, 
I  have  often  wished  for  a  vote,  although  it  was  far  from  my  inten- 
tion to  express  my  wish  in  this  letter.  But  here,  more  than  any 
region  I  have  known,  the  ballot  seems  to  be  a  subtle  but  insur- 
mountable barrier  between  me  and  all  questions  subject  to  a  vote. 
Our  women  take  part  in  the  work  of  men.  If  necessary,  they 
help  take  care  of  the  live  stock,  gather  wood,  and  work  in  the 
fields,  but  their  sphere  most  emphatically  does  not  include  "med- 
dling ' '  with  questions  to  be  decided  by  men  alone. 

I  am  reminded  of  this  by  a  placard  which  is  posted  upon  the 
door  of  the  school-house.  It  calls  attention  of  parents  to  the 
State  law  which  requires  six  months '  yearly  school  attendance  of 
every  child  of  the  required  age.  Owing  to  a  curious  knot  which 
no  one  attempts  to  cut,  the  children  of  this  neighborhood  are 
getting  only  four  months'  schooling  in  a  year,  although  we  are 
paying  taxes  for  an  eight-month  term. 

The  situation  has  been  brought  about  through  a  mistake  in  dis- 
tricting the  county.  Our  district  includes  a  near-by  mountain 
and  is  of  illegal  length.  Since  the  mountain  children  must  be 
taught  as  well,  or  as  poorly,  as  the  valley  children,  and  since 
neither  the  mountain,  fathers  nor  the  valley  fathers  are  inclined 
to  two  wagon  trips  daily  to  take  the  children  to  school,  two  little 
school-houses  were  built,  one  in  the  valley,  the  other  on  the 
heights.  One  teacher  divides  the  eight  months '  term  between  the 
highlanders  and  the  lowlanders.  This  year  she  serves  the  moun- 
tain folk  from  July  through  October.  The  valley  children  will 
attend  school  from  October  through  January. 

I  should  be  an  ingrate,  Mr.  Secretary,  if  I  closed  without  tell- 
ing you  that  I  owe  my  vocational  training  as  a  farmer's  wife 


THE  RURAL  HOME  323 

almpst  entirely  to  your  Department.  My  text-books  have  been 
the  Government  bulletins.  I  have  them  bound,  indexed,  and 
catalogued.  There  is  not  a  day  ,when  some  one  of  the  household 
does  not  refer  to  them.  Yesterday  I  heard  one  of  my  aides,  a 
neighbor's  daughter,  say  to  the  other:  "Marthy,  if  you  take 
that  jelly  off  now,  you  will  be  goin'  right  against  the  Gov- 
ernment ! ' ' 


WOMEN  IN  RURAL  LIFE  1 

SIR   HORACE  PLUNKETT 

IN  the  more  intelligent  scheme  of  the  new  country  life,  the 
economic  position  of  woman  is  likely  to  be  one  of  high  importance. 
She  enters  largely  into  all  three  parts  of  our  program — better 
farming,  better  business,  better  living.  In  the  development  of 
higher  farming,  for  instance,  she  is  better  fitted  than  the  more 
muscular  but  less  patient  animal,  man,  to  carry  on  with  care  that 
work  of  milk  records,  egg  records,  etc.,  which  underlies  the 
selection  on  scientific  lines  of  the  more  productive  strains  of 
cattle  and  poultry.  And  this  kind  of  work  is  wanted  in  the 
study  not  only  of  animal,  but  also  of  plant  life. 

Again,  in  the  sphere  of  better  business,  the  housekeeping 
faculty  of  woman  is  an  important  asset,  since  a  good  system  of 
farm-  accounts  is  one  of  the  most  valuable  aids  to  successful 
farming.  But  it  is,  of  course,  in  the  third  part  of  our  program, 
—better  living, — that  woman's  greatest  opportunity  lies.  The 
woman  makes  the  home  life  of  the  Nation.  But  she  desires  also 
social  life,  and  where  she  has  the  chance  she  develops  it.  Here  it 
is  that  the  establishment  of  the  cooperative  society,  or  union,  gives 
an  opening  and  a  range  of  conditions  in  which  the  social  useful- 
ness of  woman  makes  itself  quickly  felt.  I  do  not  think  I  am 
laying  too  much  stress  on  this  matter,  because  the  pleasures,  the 
interests  and  duties  of  society,  properly  so  called, — that  is,  the 
state  of  living  together  on  friendly  terms  with  our  neighbors, — 
are  always  more  central  and  important  in  the  life  of  a  woman 
than  of  a  man.  The  man  needs  them,  too,  for  without  them  he 

i  Adapted  from  "The  Rural  Life  Problem  in  the  United  States,"  pp. 
139-141,  Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1910. 


324  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

becomes  a  mere  machine  for  making  money ;  but  the  woman,  de- 
prived of  them,  tends  to -become  a  mere  drudge. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  CHANGING  RURAL  HOME  * 

GEORGIA   L.    WHITE 

THE  committee  on  Rural  Home  Making  begs  to  submit  the  fol- 
lowing report  of  its  plans  for  work  for  the  coming  year.  In 
looking  over  the  available  material  for  a  study  of  the  problem  of 
the  rural  home  and  its  relation  to  the  rural  community  and  rural 
life,  the  committee  finds  little  that  can  be  utilized  for  a  careful 
study  of  the  present  problems.  There  has  been  much  generaliza- 
tion concerning  the  rural  home  but  this  generalization  has  been 
based  upon  material  which  is  inadequate  and  seemingly  contra- 
dictory. 

This  lack  of  reliable  material  about  the  home  seems  to  be 
due  to  several  causes. 

(1)  The  tendency  we  all  have  to  take  for  granted  the  things 
with  which  we  are  most  familiar  and  to  assume  that  the  condi- 
tions with  which  we  are  acquainted  are  typical. 

(2)  The  intimacy  of  home  relations  which  makes  a  study  of 
the  conditions  in  the  home,  except  possibly  of  the  economic  con- 
ditions, seem  to  be  an  intrusion. 

(3)  The  fact  that  many  of  those  who  in  recent  years  have  been 
interested  in  studying  rural  conditions  and  the  rural  home  have 
been  town  or  city  born  and  bred  and,  therefore,  when  they  have 
attempted  to  make  a  survey  they  have  used  the  town  home  as  the 
standard  and  have  interpreted  the  phenomena  which  they  found 
in  terms  of  the  town  home. 

(4)  The  fact  that  many  investigators  have  studied  the  home 
with  reference  to  some  particular  reform  which  they  wished  to 
introduce  into  rural  life  or  with  reference  to  some  social  scheme 
which  they  wished  to  justify. 

(5)  The  inability  of  many  of  those  interested  in  country  life 

i  Adapted  from  Proceedings  1st  Natl.  Country  Life  Conf.,  Baltimore, 
1919,  pp.  117-119.  National  Country  Life  Assn.,  Dwight  Sanderson,  Ex. 
Secy.,  Ithaca,  N.  Y. 


THE  RURAL  HOME  325 

to  realize  the  change  in  rural  home  conditions,  and  the  tendency 
they  have  shown  toward  assuming  that  the  function  which  the 
rural  home  should  perform  and  does  perform  in  the  community 
has  remained  unchanged  in  spite  of  the  great  economic  and  social 
changes  outside  the  home. 

Because  of  this  scarcity  of  reliable  material  on  which  to  base 
attempts  to  solve  some  of  the  problems  of  the  rural  home,  it 
seems  to  the  committee  that  the  most  important  pieces  of  work 
that  it  can  undertake  for  the  coming  year  will  be  those  of — 

(1)  Gathering  together  the  few  studies  which  have  already 
been  made  of  the  rural  home  and — 

(2)  Making  new  studies  in  different  sections  of  the  country 
and  under  different  conditions,  in  order  to  secure,  if  possible,  suf- 
ficient material  for  formulating  some  tentative  statements  as  to 
the  present  status  of  the  rural  home  in  the  community,  its  func- 
tion, and  its  problems. 

The  committee  feels  that  further  information  should  be 
gathered  concerning  the  following  points  and  it  expects,  also,  to 
add  others  to  the  list : 

(1)  The  functions  that  the  home  is  performing  in  the  rural 
community  and  the  degree  to  which  it  is  necessary  or  desirable 
at  the  present  time,  with  our  present  community  organization,  for 
the  home  to  provide  food,  shelter,  clothing,  recreation,  sanita- 
tion, religious  life,  etc.,  for  the  family. 

(2)  The  relative  emphasis  now  placed  in  the  rural  home  upon 
the  satisfaction  of  the  desires  of  the  members  of  the  family  for 
(a)  food,  (b)  shelter,  (c)  clothing,  (d)  "higher  life." 

(3)  The  relationships  existing  among  individuals  in  a  family 
which  tend  to  retard  or  accelerate  progress  in  the  community. 
It  is  felt  by  the  committee  that  the  study  of  the  relationships  be- 
tween men  and  women  and  between  adults  and  children  in  the 
family  may  indicate  whether  the  rural  home  is  tending  to  retain 
a  form  of  despotism — even  though  at  times  benevolent  despotism 
— which  is  out  of  harmony  with  the  democratic  standards  being 
introduced  into  the  community,  because  of  its  failure  to  provide 
for  a  division  of  rights  and  responsibilities  among  its  members; 
or  whether  the  retention  of  the  older  form  of  family  organization 
is  lending  advantageous  stability  to  the  community.     For  exam- 
ple, when  the  war  made  it  necessary  for  the  food  administrator 


326  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

to  utilize  the  schools  and  the  agricultural  extension  service  in  all 
its  branches  to  educate  the  women  and  the  children, — so  that 
food  habits  could  be  changed  and  food  saved  without  great 
detriment  to  health, — it  was  found  that  much  of  the  time,  energy 
and  money  used  in  educating  the  women  and  children  was  wasted 
and  the  results  postponed  because  of  the  form  of  control  within 
the  home,  and  the  question  arises  whether  there  is  a  compensating 
advantage  to  the  community  from  this  form  of  organization.  It 
is  felt  that  a  careful  study  of  present  relationship  may  not  only 
throw  light  upon  the  home  conditions  but  also  bring  out  some 
interesting  facts  concerning  th*e  relation  between  the  amount  of 
force  exerted  in  the  community  for  bringing  about  progress  and 
the  actual  results  produced.  It  may  also  help  to  determine 
whether  the  relationship  that  is  found  to  exist  is  based  upon  an 
economic  basis  or  a  basis  of  tradition. 

(4)  The  actions  and  reactions 'of  the  home,  the  school,  the 
church,  the  rural  government,  etc. 

(5)  The  effect  upon  the  integrity  of  the  home  of  the  new 
interests  which  are  being  introduced  into  the  rural  communities : 
i.e.  whether  they  are  tending  toward  the  disintegration  of  the 
home  or  the  integration  of  the  home  on  new  lines. 

(6)  The  fundamental,  as  well  as  the  immediate,  effects  upon 
the  rural  homes  of 

(a)  The  introduction  of  automobiles,  telephones,  better  trans- 

portation facilities  and  improved  roads,  especially  in  so 
far  as  they  bring  the  city  and  country  more  closely 
together. 

(b)  The  organization  of  the  Farm  Bureau  and  the  introduction 

into  the  counties  of  the  Home  Demonstration  Agents 
and  the  Boys  and  Girls  Clubs. 

(c)  The  emergency  work  which  the  men,  women  and  children 

of  the  rural  districts  have  been  doing  during  the  period 
of  the  war  and  the  local  emergency  organizations,  such 
as  those  formed  by  the  Red  Cross,  the  Council  of  Na- 
tional Defense,  the  Y.  W.  and  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  etc. 
These  indicate  some  of  the  lines  of  inquiry  which  the  committee 
would  like  to  follow,  though  the  committee  realizes  the  difficulties 
attending  the  securing  of  reliable  material  along  these  lines. 


RURAL  HOUSING  327 

B.    RURAL  HOUSING 
RURAL  HOUSING1 

ELMER   S.   FORBES 

% 

RURAL  housing  as  a  whole  exhibits  the  same  differences,  the 
same  degrees  of  excellence  as  does  the  housing  of  the  towns. 
There  are  numbers  of  farms  where  the  dwellings  are  well' built 
and  provided  with  modern  systems  of  heating  and  lighting  and 
with  every  convenience  for  the  economical  dispatch  of  the  work 
of  the  household,  where  the  barns  and  outhouses  are  well  kept 
and  clean,  and  where  the  sanitation  is  all  that  can  be  desired.  At 
the  other  end  of  the  scale  there  are  to  be  found  here  and  there  in 
the  country  single  houses  or  small  groups  of  houses  which  exhibit 
many  of  the  characteristic  marks  of  the  slum.  Not  all,  for  in' 
the  open  country  at  the  worst,  there  is  plenty  of  fresh  air  and 
sunlight  and  space;  but  there  are  dirt  and  filth  indescribable, 
the  most  primitive  sanitation,  serious  overcrowding  and  indecent 
promiscuity.  These  slum  spots  exist  not  only  in  remote  dis- 
tricts far  from  the  railroads,  but  close  search  will  find  them  in 
many  communities  where  they  would  not  be  expected  and  where 
their  presence  is  known  to  but  few,  on  narrow  country  by-ways 
and  lanes,  in  wild  places  in  the  vicinity  of  the  railways,  in  ne- 
glected woodlands;  indeed,  there  is  scarcely  a  hamlet  or  town 
within  whose  limits  these  disreputable  shacks  may  not  be  dis- 
covered. 

Two  or  three  cases  may  be  instanced  by  way  of  illustration. 
The  family  of  a  small  farmer  on  the  outskirts  of  a  country  village 
was  found  living  in  a  one  room  log  cabin  in  utter  disregard  of 
the  ordinary  laws  of  health  and  decency.  As  a  consequence,  two 
of  the  children  had  been  attacked  by  tuberculosis,  and  unless  im- 
mediate action  were  taken  there  was  every  reason  to  believe  that 
all  would  become  affected.  Another  such  family  lived  in  a  dilapi- 
dated combination  of  dwelling  and  barn,  not  fit  to  be  the  habita- 
tion of  either  cattle  or  human  beings,  Inhere  the  overcrowding  was 
equal  to  that  in  the  most  'congested  districts  of  the  cities  and  all 

i  Adapted  from  the  Annals  of  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social 
Science,  January,  1914,  pp.  110-116. 


328  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

sanitary  conveniences  were  conspicuous  by  their  absence.  As  an 
example  of  still  lower  type  there  may  be  instanced  a  degenerate 
group  of  four  men,  two  women  and  three  children  who  occupied 
a  shack  in  a  clearing  of  the  woods  in  the  neighborhood  of  a  New 
England  town  until  they  were  finally  dispersed  by  the  authori- 
ties. 

Such  cases  can  be  duplicated  almost  anywhere.  In  all  of  them, 
with  scarcely  an  exception,  the  housing  conditions  are  vile,  the 
equal  of  anything  in  the  slums  of  the  towns,  and  yet  in  the  opin- 
ion of  the  writer  the  problem  which  they  present  is  not  essentially 
one  of  housing  reform.  In  this  respect  the  particularly  bad  hous- 
ing of  the  rural  districts  is  quite  different  from  that  of  the  towns. 
City  slums  are  due  in  large  measure  to  land  and  business  specula- 
tion, utilization  of  land  for  dwelling  house  sites  which  is  too 
valuable  for  this  purpose,  an  inequitable  system  of  taxation,  the 
lack  of  any  housing  law  worth  the  name,  inadequate  supervision, 
and  a  disposition  on  the  part  of  some  landlords  to  exploit  their 
tenants.  These  are  causes  which  are  in  no  way  connected  with 
the  character  of  the  families  living  in  the  slums,  and  their  opera- 
tion can  be  checked  by  right  legislation  honestly  enforced. 

The  slum  spot  in  the  open  country,  however,  is  not  so  much  due 
to  social  or  economic  causes  beyond  the  control  of  the  occupant 
as  it  is  to  his  own  mental  and  moral  deficiencies.  Land  specula- 
tion, speculative  building,  methods  of  taxation,  the  greed  of  land- 
lords, none  of  these  in  most  cases  has  anything  to  do  with  it. 
Such  dwellings  are  the  natural  expression  of  the  lives  of  the 
shiftless,  feeble-minded,  immoral,  drunken  or  criminal  people 
who  inhabit  them.  It  is  not  a  better  housing  law  which  is  re- 
quired here  so  much  as  it  is  the  labor  colony,  the  penitentiary, 
the  almshouse,  and  the  home  for  moral  imbeciles.  These  social 
plague  spots  are  the  cause  of  enormous  public  expense  and  are 
a  steadily  increasing  burden  upon  the  industry  and  thrift  of  the 
community.  They  should  be  accurately  registered,  carefully 
studied,  and  each  one  should  be  disposed  of  upon  its  own  merits. 
All  this  will  cost  much  effort  and  money  but  not  a  tithe  of  what 
it  will  cost  twenty,  thirty,  or  fifty  years  hence,  and  incidentally 
it  will  wipe  out  the  country  slum. 

Dr.  W.  C.  Stiles,  of  the  U.  S.  Marine  Hospital  Service,  states 
that  of  3,369  farmhouses  in  six  different  States  57  per  cent,  have 


RURAL  HOUSING  329 

no  privies  of  any  kind.  The  better  grade  of  farm  house  is  always 
provided  with  some  sort  of  sanitary  convenience,  but  the  number 
where  it  is  anything  more  than  the  ordinary  outdoor  privy  is  com- 
paratively small.  The  neglected  privy  is  the  greatest  danger  to 
the  health  of  the  farming  community,  and  a  menace  to  the  popula- 
tion of  the  towns  through  the  part  which  it  must  play  in  the 
contamination  of  milk,  vegetables,  and  fruits  sent  to  city  markets. 
It  denies  the  soil  all  around  it,  and  unless  carefully  located  may 
pollute  the  family  water  supply.  The  fact  is  so  generally  known 
that  it  is  not  necessary  to  give  statistics  showing  that  serious  epi- 
demics have  been  started  by  the  use  of  water  from  country  wells 
polluted  by  the  disease-infected  privy.  It  is  the  breeding  place 
of  countless  generations  of  flies,  and  when  used  by  persons  suf- 
fering from  any  kind  of  infectious  disease,  as  fevers,  dysentery, 
diarrhea,  and  the  like,  the  contagion  may  be  spread  far  and  wide 
by  their  agency.  The  family  cess  pool  is  but  one  degree  less 
dangerous  than  the  outdoor  privy,  and  together  they  have  un- 
doubtedly been  responsible  for  a  vast  amount  of  sickness  and 
death. 


OVERCROWDING  AND  DEFECTIVE  HOUSING 1 

HARVEY   BASHORE 

WHAT  is  the  result  of  this  overcrowding  and  lack  of  proper 
housing  in  the  country?  Just  exactly  the  same  as  in  the  great 
cities.  Lack  of  efficiency,  disease,  and  premature  death  to  many. 
We  have  been  talking  much  lately  of  our  conservative  policy  of 
lumber,  coal  and  wild  animals,  but  in  many  instances  fail  to  see 
the  great  loss  due  to  human  inefficiency  brought  about  by  lack  of 
suitable  environment.  While  the  great  majority  of  people  sub- 
jected to  overcrowding  and  bad  housing  conditions  do  not  prema- 
turely die,  j^et  they  have  lessened  physical  and  mental  vigor,  are 
less  able  to  do  properly  their  daily  work,  and  not  only  become  a 
loss  to  themselves  and  their  families,  but  to  the  State ;  and  for- 
ever stand  on  the  threshold  of  that  dread  disease — tuberculosis; 
for  tuberculosis  is  the  one  great  disease  of  the  overcrowded. 

1  Adapted  from  "Overcrowding  and  Defective  Housing,"  pp.  8O-92,  John 
Wiley  and  Son,  N.  Y. 


330  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Just  how  much  tuberculosis  we  have  in  the  rural  districts  in 
proportion  to  the  great  cities  is  pretty  hard  to  say:  but  every 
one  who  has  investigated  it  is  -positive  in  the  opinion  that  there 
is  just  as  much  in  the  country  districts :  indeed,  some  report  more 
in  the  country  than  in  the  adjoining  cities.  We  find  it  in  the 
farmhouse  and  the  mountain  home :  habits  of  carelessness  possibly 
keep  up  the  infection.  We  do  not  have  "lung  blocks,"  like  the 
large  cities,  but  we  do  have  "lung  houses,"  where  case  after  case 
of  tuberculosis  has  lived  and  perhaps  developed. 

The  prevalence  of  tuberculosis  in  the  country  is  so  evidently 
marked  that  there  is  a  growing  interest  in  the  subject  in  many 
places.  The  Wisconsin  Antituberculosis  League,  a  year  or  so 
ago,  made  a  very  careful  and  exact  sanitary  survey  of  a  certain 
rural  district  in  that  State,  relative  to  the  amount  of  this  dis- 
ease, and  found  that  in  some  parts  of  this  district  the  death-rate 
from  tuberculosis  exceeded  that  of  Milwaukee,  Wisconsin 's  largest 
city. 

Minnesota  also  discovered  that  it  had  much  tuberculosis  in  its 
rural  districts.  "As  serious,"  says  Dr.  Daugherty,  who  investi- 
gated the  subject,  ' '  as  that  in  the  congested  areas  of  the  cities. ' ' 
Following  a  rural  survey  of  several  townships,  under  the  auspices 
of  the  State  Antituberculosis  Association,  there  were  found  hous- 
ing conditions  much  as  I  have  described  in  the  preceding  pages 
as  existing  in  Pennsylvania.  "The  average  number  of  people 
sleeping  in  one  room,"  says  the  report,  "was  four."  In  one 
house  there  were  eight,  in  another  nine,  and  it  was  not  at  all 
uncommon  to  find  five  or  six.  This  was  not  due  to  the  fact  that 
there  was  not  enough  room,  for  in  many  of  the  houses  the  whole 
family  would  sleep  in  one  room,  use  one  for  the  kitchen,  and 
leave  two,  three,  and  in  some  cases  four,  rooms  vacant. 

Coincident  with  this  bad  housing  there  was  found  one  township 
where  there  were  twenty-two  deaths  from  tuberculosis  in  a  popu- 
lation of  500  in  ten  years :  a  death  rate  of  44  per  10,000.  These 
investigators  in  Minnesota  also  found  that  "contributing  causes, 
as  overwork  and  poor  food,  which  play  such  an  important  part 
among  the  inhabitants  of  the  crowded  tenement  districts,  do  not 
usually  count  for  much  in  the  country.  Bad  housing  and  unre- 
stricted exposure  to  contagion  seem  to  be  the  great  factors. ' '  Of 
course,  in  certain  well-to-do  farming  districts,  such  as  were  under 


RURAL  HOUSING  331 

investigation,  this  would  hold  good,  but  in  many  other  places,  es- 
pecially in  parts  of  Pennsylvania  known  to  the  author,  poor 
food  and  lack  of  food  are  a  vast  contributing  cause  of  this  dis- 
ease. A  poor  constitution  to  start  with,  and  insufficient  food, 
soon  engender  a  condition  which  quickly  yields  to  the  inroads 
of  the  bacillus.  As  a  corollary  to  this  is  the  rapid  improvement 
of  such  incipient  cases,  when  put  on  the  food  and  under  the 
proper  environment  of  a  sanitarium. 

And  now  a  word,  a  very  short  word,  about  the  remedy  for  over- 
crowding and  bad  housing  in  the  country.  This  probably  can 
not  be  attacked  as  in  the  great  cities,  by  legislative  enactment  or 
resort  to  legal  measures,  but  the  solution  lies,  it  seems  to  me,  in 
proper  education  by  the  yarious  health  authorities,  by  the  schools, 
and  by  the  press,  and  the  crusade  must  be  kept  up  until  the  peo- 
ple understand  that  it  pays — pays  in  real  dollars  and  cents — to 
live  in  sanitary  homes.  Educate  the  rural  dweller  in  regard  to 
the  penalties  for  bad  housing,  show  him  how  tuberculosis  follows 
in  the  wake  of  overcrowding,  poor  food,  and  dissipation:  in  a 
great  many  instances  he  will  mend  his  ways.  In  Pennsylvania 
this  work  is  carried  on  by  the  Tuberculosis  Dispensaries  of  the 
State  Department  of  Health  scattered  all  through  the  State, 
where  they  have  become  the  foci  for  spreading  sanitary  knowl- 
edge of  just  the  sort  needed  in  rural  communities.  Visiting 
nurses  from  these  dispensaries  go  to  the  homes,  and  to  my  per- 
sonal knowledge  do  much,  very  much,  to  remedy  the  defects  of 
bad  and  improper  living,  and  do  it  without  resort  to  any  legal 
means.  There  is  no  factor  so  potent  for  good  as  the  work  of 
the  visiting  nurses  of  this  great  health  department;  and  many 
other  States  are  taking  up  the  work  and  carrying  it  forward 
on  the  same  lines. 


HOUSING  CONDITIONS  ON  FARMS  IN 
NEW  YORK  STATE  1 

L.    H.    BAILEY 

HOUSING  conditions  in  the  country  run  all  the  way  from  very 
cheap  and  poor  tenant  houses  to  well-appointed  large  farm  res- 

i  Adapted    from    "York    State    Rural    Problems,"    Vol.    1 :  55-59,    Lyon, 
Albany,  1910. 


332  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

idences.  Between  these  two  extremes  there  is  every  range  of 
condition.  The  better  class  of  farm  residences  is  all  that  can  be 
desired.  The  poorer  class  is,  of  course,  quite  the  opposite. 
Even  the  better  class  of  farm  residences  does  not  represent  money 
value  as  measured  by  city  and  town  values.  This  is  largely  due 
to  the  fact  that  most  of  them  were  built  many  years  ago,  when 
materials  were  cheap,  and  also  before  the  addition  of  water- 
works and  other  modern  improvements.  A  residence  in  the 
farming  region  that  is  valued  at  one  thousand  dollars  may  be 
actually  more  roomy  and  comfortable  than  one  in  the  town 
that  is  valued  at  more  than  twice  that  sum.  In  this  letter  I  am, 
of  course,  omitting  all  reference  to  the  country  seats  of  non- 
residents or  absentees. 

I  have  asked  Professor  Warren  to  give  me  his  comment  on 
housing  conditions  as  found  in  his  surveys;  and  most  of  the 
following  statements  of  fact  are  his. 

Practically  all  of  the  farmhouses  in  New  York  State,  as  in  the 
northern  states  in  general,  are  made  of  wood.  In  the  northeast- 
ern states  nearly  all  of  these  houses  were  built  at  least  fifty  years 
ago.  Only  a  small  percentage  have  been  constructed  along  the 
newer  lines.  In  Livingston  county,  which  is  one  of  the  richest 
agricultural  regions  in  the  country,  Warren  found  that  the 
average  value  of  these  houses  in  1909  was  not  quite  $1,600.  Of 
course,  it  would  cost  much  more  than  an  average  of  $1,600  to 
build  these  houses,  but  this  is  the  estimated  average  value  of  the 
house  as  it  stands.  Perhaps  $1,000  would  be  nearer  correct 
for  the  average  value  of  the  farm  residence  in  the  State,  but  it 
would  take  over  twice  this  much  to  build  these  houses  at  the 
present  time.  The  new  houses  would  probably  also  be  worth 
twice  as  much,  because  new  and  better  adapted  to  the  needs. 

The  average  number  in  the  family  in  Livingston  county  is  4.2 
persons,  and  the  average  of  boarders  or  hired  men  .8,  making 
a  total  of  five  persons  as  the  size  of  the  average  farm  family. 
Of  course,  this  gives  no  suggestion  as  to  the  number  of  children 
away  from  home.  In  Tompkins  county  the  average  farm  fam- 
ily, exclusive  of  hired  help,  was  found  to  be  3.55. 

The  size  of  the  farmhouse  is,  of  course,  exceedingly  variable, 
but  the  average  would  probabty  be  about  six  or  seven  ro.oms. 
The  farm  water-supply  is  practically  always  situated  at  some 


RURAL  HOUSING  333 

distance  from  the  house.  On  some  farms  running  water  is  piped 
to  the  house,  but  these  are  exceptions.  Bathrooms  are  yet  rare 
in  general  farming  regions.  In  western  New  York,  along  the 
lake  shore,  a  considerable  number  of  farmers  are  installing  water- 
supply  and  bathrooms,  but  outside  of  this  section  probably  not 
more  than  one  in  several  hundred  of  the  farms  has  a  bathroom. 
In  one  county  less  than  one  in  500  was  found  to  be  thus  sup- 
plied. The  heat  is  nearly  always  provided  by  a  kitchen  stove, 
and  in  colder  weather  often  one  additional  stove  is  used.  The 
chief  fuel  is  wood,  but  a  considerable  amount  of  coal  is  used  in 
winter,  particularly  for  the  second  stove.  The  almost  universal 
system  of  lighting  is  with  kerosene  lamps,  although  acetylene 
is  used  by  a  small  number  of  farmers.  Perhaps  more  persons 
have  acetylene  for  lighting  than  have  bathrooms.  The  privy  is 
located  largely  by  chance,  so  that  it  is  often  near  the  wells,  but 
in  the  great  majority  of  cases  it  is  not  close  enough  to  be  a 
serious  menace  to  the  water-supply.  The  fact  that  it  is  often 
left  open  so  as  to  provide  a  feeding-place  and  gathering-place 
for  flies  is  perhaps  the  greatest  source  of  danger. 

All  of  the  above  discussion  refers  to  the  main  house  on  the 
farm.  The  houses  occupied  by  hired  help  are  usually  smaller 
and  not  in  so  good  repair  as  are  the  farmhouses  discussed  above. 
Probably  tenant  houses  do  not  average  more  than  five  or  six 
rooms.  The  difference  between  them  and  the  other  house  is 
likely  to  be  more  striking  in  questions  of  repair  than  in  actual 
size. 

The  change  from  old  housing  conditions  to  new  is  very  grad- 
ual. Perhaps  it  ought  to  be  accelerated  by  having  more  atten- 
tion given  to  the  subject  in  public  lecture  and  teaching  work. 
It  is  customary  not  to  discuss  personal  questions  so  much  as 
crops  and  live-stock  and  commercial  situations.  If  the  farmer 
lacks  in  some  of  the  mechanical  conveniences  of  city  dwellers,  he 
gains  in  space  to  each  person,  light,  outlook,  storage  place,  room 
to  move,  and  ability  to  control  his  premises.  If  he  were  to  add 
more  freely  of  mechanical  conveniences  and  contrivances,  his 
conditions  of  housing  would  be  enviable.  We  need  now  to  have 
as  much  ingenuity  applied  to  housing  conditions  as  has  been 
applied  to  farming  practices. 


334  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


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Baldensperger,  J.  Beekeeping  for  Women.  American  Bee  Journal, 
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Beckman,  F.  W.  Women  Testers  in  Iowa.  Hoard's  Dairyman,  V.  55, 
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1918. 

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Who  Have  Been  to  the  Agricultural  Camps.  Country  Gentleman, 
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McLean,  A.  M.  The  Fruit  Industries  of  California.  In  Wage-earn- 
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Noel,  C.  T.  My  Bees.  American  Bee  Journal,  V.  58,  pp.  22-23,  Jan., 
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Ogilvie,  I.  H.  Agriculture,  Labor,  and  Women.  Columbia  Univ.  Quar- 
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Preistman,  M.  T.  How  One  Woman  Keeps  Bees.  Country  Life  in 
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16,  1918. 

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Warwick,  Frances  Evelyn.  Hodge  in  Petticoats.  Fortnightly  Re- 
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Winters,  S.  R.  Miss  Hefner — Cheesemaker.  Kimball's  Dairy  Farmer, 
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THE  RURAL  HOME 

Andrews,  Benj.  R.     Education  for  the  Home.      U.  S.  B.  of  Education, 

1914. 
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Assn.,  Baltimore,  Md. 
Buell,   Jennie.     One   Woman's  Work  for   Farm   Women.     Whitcornb, 

Boston,  1908. 
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336  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Domestic  Needs  of  Farm  Women.  U.  S.  D.  A.,  Report  104,  1915. 
Extracts  from  letters  received  from  farm  women  in  response  to  an 
inquiry. 

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Educational  Needs  of  Farm  Women.     U.  S.  D.  A.,  Report  105,  1915. 

Forbes,  E.  S.     Rural  Housing.     Annals  51 : 110-6,  Jan.,  1914. 

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sponse to  an  inquiry. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL 

AN  EPIGRAM1 

T.    J.    COATES 

'  *  THE  average  farmer  and  rural  teacher  think  the  rural  school 
as  a  little  house,  on  a  little  ground,  with  a  little  equipment, 
where  a  little  teacher  at  a  little  salary,  for  a  little  while,  teaches 
little  children  little  things." 

THE  STATUS  OF  THE  RURAL  SCHOOL2 

ERNEST   BURNHAM 

THE  value  of  the  school  as  an  integrating  agent  in  rural  com- 
munity life  lies  primarily  in  the  success  of  its  work  as  a  school. 
No  single  institution  can  so  cheapen  rural  community  life  as  a 
poor  school,  because  next  to  the  common  industry — agriculture 
— the  school  is  the  greatest  mutual  interest.  Besides  doing  what 
it  is  specifically  directed  to  do — interpret  to  children  their  in- 
heritances— the  school  may  react  as  a  unifying  agent  through 
the  school  library,  the  annual  meeting,  the  course  of  study,  the 
social  activities  of  the  pupils,  cooperation  between  school  and 
home,  through  being  the  leader  in,  or  at  least  the  host  for,  the 
intellectual  and  a?sthetic  community  meetings  and  through  sym- 
pathetic, voluntary,  competent  and  unostentatious  promotion 
of  the  best  things  by  the  teacher. 

The  chief  elements  of  efficiency  in  the  rural  schools  are :  first, 
individual  objective  in  instruction;  second,  simple  and  natural 
stimulations;  third,  the  inter-action  of  all  grades  and  ages; 

1  Adapted   from   a   circular    letter   issued    by   United    States   Bureau   of 
Education. 

2  Adapted  from  Rural  School  Efficiency  in  Kalamazoo  County,  Michigan, 
Bulletin  No.  4,   1900,   pp.   22-25.     Published   by   State   Superintendent  of 
Public  Instruction,  Lansing. 

337 


338  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

fourth,  the  constant,  though  not  often  consciously  realized,  tui- 
tion of  nature. 

The  chief  elements  of  efficiency  now  absent  from  the  rural 
schools  are:  first,  conscious  integration  of  the  work  by  teachers 
and  pupils ;  second,  the  best  physical  and  mechanical  accessories ; 
third,  due  appreciation  of  the  value  of  education  by  many  par- 
ents and  pupils;  fourth,  adequately  qualified  and  efficiently  di- 
rected teachers. 

The  unexhausted  resources  of  the  rural  schools  are:  first,  an 
equalized  and  proportionate  use  of  local  and  state  funds;  sec- 
ond, a  comparatively  well  trained  and  experienced  staff  of  teach- 
ers, well  led  and  themselves  capable  of  leadership ;  third,  a  con- 
sciously intelligent  interpretation  of  nature;  fourth,  the  im- 
petus of  Awakened  community  consciousness. 

The  state  cannot  afford  supinely  or  ignorantly  to  neglect  fully 
to  develop  the  unexhausted  resources  of  the  public  schools.  It 
is  true  that  the  rural  schools  are  less  well  cared  for  to-day  than 
the  urban  schools.  It  is  historically  true  that  the  country  bred 
citizen  has  been  the  nation's  most  valuable  human  asset.  He  has 
had  a  longer  childhood  and  youth.  He  has  come  to  maturity 
with  a  greater  potential  of  nervous  energy.  He  has,  by  constant 
association  in  work  and  play,  absorbed  the  wisdom  of  the  parent 
generation.  Nature  has  had  him  largely  to  herself,  and — 

"Whenever  the  way  seemed  long, 

Or  liis  heart  began  to  fail, 
She  sang  a  more  wonderful  song, 
And  told  a  more  marvelous  tale." 

President  Roosevelt  said,  "The  small  farm  worked  by  the 
owner  has  been  the  best  place  to  breed  leaders  for  both  city  and 
country." 

The  conservation  of  that  wholesome  country  life  which  pro- 
duces the  greatest  human  excellence,  is  the  first  public  considera- 
tion. The  rural  school  is  the  most  peculiarly  public  institution 
in  country  life.  It  is  the  shortest  cut  to  planned  public  par- 
ticipation in  rural  progress.  The  rural  school  teacher  is  the 
largest  factor  in  the  problem.  The  teacher  is  the  publicly  ap- 
pointed executive  partner  of  the  parent  generation,  of  nature, 
and  of  God.  The  small  community  integrates  the  elemental 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  339 

sources  of  life.  It  is,  therefore,  an  oasis  capable  of  producing 
the  richest  human  fruitage.  Selected  fertilization,  industrial, 
educational,  social,  political  and  spiritual,  is  the  supreme  need. 
Equipped  and  inspired  leaders  incarnate  and  communicate  se- 
lected fertilization.  The  state  may,  if  she  will,  put  such  leaders 
into  the  life  of  every  rural  community. 

The  four  inequalities  in  the  state's  provision  for  the  intel- 
lectual uprearing  of  her  youth  are : 

1.  The  collection  and  use  of  the  public  funds. 

2.  The  agencies  instituted  for  the  qualification  of  publicly  em- 
ployed teachers. 

3.  The  supervisory  control  of  the  schools. 

4.  The  years  of  instruction  offered  at  public  expense. 

Two  groups  of  questions  immediately  suggest  themselves  to  the 
student  of  rural  schools : 
First  group — 

1.  To  what  extent  are  these  inequalities  due  to  defects  in  the 
statutes? 

2.  What  amendments  are  necessary? 
Second  group — 

1.  What  inequalities  are  not  due  to  defects  in  the  statutes? 

2.  How  may  these  be  reached  and  remedied? 

The  answers  to  these  questions,  which  the  facts  presented  in 
this  report  suggest,  are : 

First  group — 

1.  Inequalities 

(a)  in  the  collection  and  use  of  the  public  funds, 

(b)  in  supervision, 

(c)  in  the  years  of  free  public  instruction, 
are  due  to  inadequate  statutory  provisions. 

2.  The  amendments  suggested  are — 

(a)  the  enlargement  of  the  area  unit  for  taxation  pur- 
poses from  an  ungraded  district  to  a  township ; 
this  not  necessarily  to  involve  the  centralization  of 
the  schools,  ample  provision  for  which,  when  de- 
sired, has  already  been  made ; 

(b)  the  provision  of  sufficient  means  for  securing  effi- 
cient supervisory  direction  of  all  the  schools ; 


340  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

(c)  the  extension  of  the  privilege  of  free  secondary  in- 
struction to  pupils  in  schools  not  giving  such  in- 
struction, through  the  payment  of  tuition  and 
transportation  by  the  township. 

Second  group — 

1.  Inequalities  in  the  qualification  of  publicly  employed 
teachers  are  human  considerations  largely  not  subject  to 
legal  control. 

However,  there  is  at  present  a  very  noticeable  difference  in  the 
preparation  by  the  state  of  teachers  for  ungraded  rural  schools 
and  graded  urban  schools.  This  condition  is  not  due  to  defec- 
tive statutes.  It  is  due  largely  to  an  interpretation  of  the 
statutes  which  has  permitted  a  concentration  of  the  state's  ap- 
propriations for  teacher  training,  more  than  five-thirteenths  of 
which  has  been  paid  by  rural  ungraded  districts,  upon  the 
preparation  of  teachers  for  graded  urban  schools. 

2.  This  condition  has  come  into  public  attention  and  in  recent 
years  a  redirection  of  part  of  the  normal  school  activities  to  the 
service  of  the  ungraded  rural  schools  has  begun  in  a  small  way 
to  make  good  to  these  schools  the  accumulated  loss  of  the  years. 
Further  attempts  have  been  made  to  refund  the  rural  communi- 
ties that  which  has  been  taken  from  them  by  the  state  without 
practically  any  direct  return,  by  the  remitting  of  tuition  in  the 
normal  schools  to  teachers  preparing  for  country  service  and  by 
the  institution  of  the  county  normal  training  classes,  largely  sup- 
ported by  the  state,  for  rural  teachers. 


REHABILITATING  THE  RURAL  SCHOOL1 

L.    L.    BERNARD 

IT  is  the  contention  of  the  present  writer  that  the  heart  of  the 
problem  of  functionalizing  the  rural  school  is  the  question  of 
the  curriculum.  Therefore,  in  the  following  brief  outline  of 
changes  most  urgently  needed  to  be  wrought  in  the  general  or- 
ganization of  the  rural  school  this  change  is  placed  first, 

i  Adapted  from  "School  and  Society,"  Vol.  IV,  Xo.  100,  p.  810-16,  Nov. 
25,  1916. 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  341 

We  must  fall  back  upon  the  rural  school  as  the  only  agency 
which  fulfills  all  the  fundamental  conditions  necessary  to  equip 
it  for  the  work  of  educating  the  rural  population  up  to  the  new 
requirements  of  country  life  in  our  day.  The  rural  school,  under 
proper  conditions  as  to  organization  and  curriculum,  should  be 
able  to  give  this  information  most  effectively  to  the  largest  num- 
ber and  in  the  shortest  time.  Therefore  all  reforms  of  the  rural 
school  should  aim  directly  or  indirectly  at  functionalizing  its 
curriculum.  The  changes  which  might  be  immediately  brought 
about  in  the  rural  school's  course  of  study,  without  arousing  un- 
necessary opposition  or  disturbance,  are  three  in  number. 

1.  Certain  of  the  old  and  well  established  subjects,  such  as 
arithmetic,  grammar  (language  study),  biology  (nature  study), 
geography  and  physiology  (sanitation  and  hygiene),  should  be 
brought  down  to  practical  and  local  application.     Educational 
theory  as  applied  to  the  rural  community  has  already  gone  this 
far.     It  is  only  necessary  to  infuse  the  political  state  educational 
administrations  with  the  knowledge  of  the  desirability  of  this 
change  to  make  it  fairly  effective,  and  there  is  some  cause  for 
encouragement  in  believing  that  this  desired  end  may  be  at- 
tained even  before  politics  is  eradicated  from  these  state  educa- 
tional administrations.     Some  text-books  and  teaching  outlines 
looking  in  this  direction  have  already  been  prepared  in  each  of 
the  subjects  mentioned.     The  general  effect  of  such  a  change 
would  be  to  bring  the  formal  instruction  of  many  of  the  standard 
courses  in  the  rural  school  into  direct  and  functional  contact 
with  the  techniques  of  the  occupation  of  farming.     Nor  would 
any  general  or  cultural  educational  values  adhering  to  these  sub- 
jects be  lost,  for  the  general  underlying  principles  of  knowledge 
in  each  would  of  course  remain  the  same.     Only  the  illustrative 
material  would  change. 

2.  The  courses  mentioned  above  can  at  their  best  be  made  to 
deal  only  with  the  techniques   of   production   and   sanitation. 
They  can  not  be  made  to  reach  over  into  the  constructive  eco- 
nomic and  social  activities  of  country  life. 

At  present  there  are  no  courses  in  the  country  school  which 
perform  this  wide  function,  and  such  courses  must  be  introduced. 
The  knowledge  for  which  there  is  now  the  most  crying  need  in 
the  rural  community  is  that  which  will  enable  the  farmer  to 


342  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

understand  the  fundamentals  of  his  business,  social,  institutional 
and  civic  life.  The  modern  farmer,  regardless  of  the  size  of  his 
acres,  must  be  a  business  man,  whether  he  wishes  it  or  not.  He 
has  at  last  been  caught  in  the  swirl  of  the  industrial  revolution 
with  its  emphasis  upon  division  of  labor  and  specialization ;  upon 
markets  and  credits;  and  above  all  upon  science  and  efficiency. 
For  the  sake  of  greater  productivity  he  has  lost  his  self-suffi- 
ciency. A  half-hearted  teaching  of  agriculture  has  been  added 
to  the  rural  course  of  study,  but  the  farmer  has  not  learned  to 
enter  the  markets  to  the  best  advantage  nor  to  protect  himself 
once  the  requirements  of  his  occupation  have  brought  him  in. 
His  institutions  are  largely  outgrown  survivals  of  pioneer  con- 
ditions and  have  neither  the  organization  nor  the  grasp  neces- 
sary for  adjusting  him  to  modern  life.  They  are  largely  inert 
and  parasitic,  not  virile  with  the  spirit  of  leadership.  The  gov- 
ernmental aspects  of  rural  life  are  so  little  in  the  farmer's  con- 
sciousness that  he  scarcely  realizes  that  he  has  any  such  connec- 
tions at  all.  Although  the  plan  of  organization  of  county  and 
rural  governments  is  not  beyond  the  powers  of  comprehension 
of  the  most  ordinary  normal  intellect,  very  few  farmers  who  have 
no  political  ambitions  for  themselves  really  understand  it. 
Government  means  to  them  national  government,  and  no  other 
group  so  complacently  takes  its  political  opinions  ready  made 
or  so  universally  fails  to  take  any  opinion  on  matters  of  most 
intimate  personal  concern  to  it.  Organization  for  independent 
political  expression,  especially  on  local  matters,  is  extremely  ex- 
ceptional among  farmers. 

Th6  explanation  of  such  a  wholesale  abdication  of  the  priv- 
ileges of  democratic  control  over  his  destiny  can  be  explained 
only  in  terms  of  the  farmer's  lack  of  information  regarding  his 
broader  social  and  economic  needs  and  the  techniques  of  organiz- 
ing his  interests  effectively.  The  most  hopeful  proposition  for 
meeting  this  need  is  to  introduce  just  this  subject-matter  into 
the  rural  school  curriculum.  The  time  has  arrived  when  we  can 
no  longer  forbear  to  add  courses  of  regular  instruction  in  mat- 
ters of  such  intimate  concern  to  the  farmer's  welfare. 

3.  A  third  change  in  the  rural  school  curriculum  capable  of 
accomplishing  much  good  would  be  to  make  the  school  readers 
truly  supplementary  to  the  general  purposes  of  education.  The 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  343 

reader  should  supplement  the  two  types  of  instruction  outlined 
above,  but  particularly  the  second,  the  more  general  economic, 
social  and  civic  type  of  teaching.  The  readers  should  be  dis- 
tinctly supplementary,  their  general  function  being  to  stimulate 
interest  in  more  intensive  study  and  to  give  coloring  and  emo- 
tional content  through  personal  instances  and  sidelights.  Thus 
a  description  of  cooperation  in  Denmark  or  of  the  work  of  Pastor 
Oberlin  or  the  story  of  the  founding  of  the  John  Swaney  School 
could  not  but  give  the  student  an  impetus  to  the  discovery 
through  his  formal  courses  of  the  techniques  for  bringing  about 
such  changes  in  his  own  community. 

One  of  the  most  frequent  objections  to  proposals  to  expand 
the  curriculum  on  its  civic  side  is  that  there  is  not  time  for  such 
a  modified  curriculum  in  the  one-teacher  rural  school.  That  is 
true  in  essentials.  It  is  also  true  that  there  is  not  time  for  the 
efficient  teaching  of  any  curriculum  in  a  school  consisting  of 
eight  grades  and  presided  over  by  one  teacher  only.  Where  at 
all  possible  the  old  one-room  school  must  go.  It  belongs  to  the 
age  when  farming  was  carried  on  by  means  of  a  single  horse  and 
a  double  shovel  or  a  "bull  tongue"  plow  and  each  family  was 
a  self-sufficing  unit  with  but  few  and  simple  contacts  with  the 
outside  world.  This  is  the  age  of  machine  farming  and  it  is  also 
the  age  of  efficiency  in  education.  The  consolidation  movement 
is  so  well  under  way  that  it  scarcely  needs  the  support  of  argu- 
ment ;  it  is  much  more  in  need  of  guidance.  There  are  three 
kinds  of  consolidation,  and  of  these  complete  consolidation  of 
enough  districts  to  make  the  school  really  efficient  and  to  pro- 
vide high-school  facilities  is  by  far  the  best  type  where  it  is  at  all 
possible.  This  sort  of  consolidation  involves  transportation, 
which  is  at  once  the  most  expensive  and  the  most  combated  fea- 
ture of  consolidation.  But  even  transportation  pays  in  the  long 
run.  Where  complete  consolidation  with  transportation  does  not 
appear  to  be  feasible  many  districts  are  consolidating  for  high- 
school  purposes  and  leaving  the  district  schools  intact  for  the 
elementary  students.  Such  a  policy  seems  of  doubtful  wisdom. 
While  there  is  a  saving  due  to  the  lack  of  community  transpor- 
tation, the  cost  in  duplication  and  inefficiency  probably  overbal- 
ances the  saving.  The  third  type  of  consolidation  is  to  be  found 
where  two  or  three  or  four  districts  unite,  usually  for  fiscal 


344  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

rather  than  primarily  for  educational  purposes.  Such  limited 
consolidation  may  be  better  than  none,  but  it  by  110  means  ap- 
proximates the  ideal. 

For  one  reason  or  another  there  will  probably  always  be  some 
isolated  one-teacher  schools.  What  can  we  do  with  these? 
Surely  we  must  have  a  fairly  uniform  curriculum  for  country 
schools.  Our  revised  course  of  study  could  probably  be  adapted 
to  these  schools  quite  as  well  as  the  present  one  is,  especially  if 
the  great  amount  of  dead  matter  which  now  exists  in  the  rural 
school  curriculum  were  eliminated.  And  the  resulting  benefits 
to  the  community  should  be  much  greater. 

The  best  effects  from  such  a  change  in  curriculum  can  not  be 
realized  until  the  rural  school  is  brought  into  closer  contact  with 
the  adult  members  of  the  community.  Already  in  certain 
isolated  instances  much  has  been  done  in  the  way  of  rural  school 
extension,  especially  through  agricultural  club  work,  school  fairs, 
cooperative  instruction  in  farm  practice  and  home  economics  on 
the  farms  and  in  the  homes  of  patrons;  and  in  some  cases  the 
schools  have  attempted  to  give  some  formal  instruction  to  adults. 
The  busy  teacher  of  a  one-room  school  is  necessarily  limited 
by  lack  of  time,  and  possibly  by  her  sex,  in  the  amount  that  may 
be  accomplished  in  these  directions.  Both  these  limitations  may, 
however,  be  removed  if  the  consolidated  school  and  its  extension 
work  can  be  so  expanded  as  to  include  not  only  agriculture  and 
home  economics,  but  also  cooperative  endeavor  in  the  wider 
forms  of  social  and  civic  interests. 

Along  with  these  more  definitely  educational  modifications  in 
the  rural  school  should  come  certain  administrative  changes 
which  we  need  only  mention  briefly  here.  The  value  of  medical 
and  dental  inspection  and  supervision  in  rural  schools  is  now 
conceded.  It  is  one  of  the  improvements  which  will  soon  come 
regardless  of  other  changes  here  suggested.  And  there  is  also 
great  need  of  better  state  and  county  administration,  super- 
vision and  inspection  of  rural  schools.  Likewise  our  taxing  sys- 
tem as  at  present  applied  to  country  schools  does  not  secure 
anything  like  equality  of  educational  opportunity.  These  and 
other  problems  are  coming  into  the  public  consciousness. 

But  the  heart  of  the  rural  school  problem  is  that  of  the  cur- 
riculum. For  as  it  is,  so  will  be  in  large  degree  the  intellectual, 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  345 

civic  and  occupational  outlook  of  the  farmer  of  to-morrow.  It 
should  be  repeated  that  without  knowledge  the  fanner  can  not 
even  understand  his  problems ;  much  less  will  he  be  able  to  solve 
them.  It  is  because  of  the  crucial  nature  of  this  knowledge 
problem  that  the  rural  school  is  the  determinative  institution  of 
rural  life.  If  it  fails  the  farmer  all  else  must  assuredly  fail 
him. 


THE  COUNTY  AS  A  UNIT  OF  ADMINISTRATION  l 

A.    C.   MONAHAN 

WE  find  four  units  of  organization  for  the  administration  of 
the  rural  schools  in  the  United  States — the  district,  township, 
magisterial  district,  and  county.  The  district,  or  the  single  dis- 
trict, as  it  is  sometimes  called,  is  the  unit  in  twenty-one  states 
and  in  parts  of  four  others.  The  township  is  the  unit  in  ten 
states  and  in  parts  of  three  others.  The  magisterial  district  is 
the  unit  in  two.  The  county  is  the  unit  in  eleven  states  and  in 
part  of  one  other. 

On  the  whole,  the  county  unit  has  most  to  commend  it.  The 
territory  included  in  a  county  is  usually  small  enough  for  a 
county  board  to  keep  in  touch  with  the  entire  county,  and  it  is 
large  enough  for  school  districts  to  be  arranged  to  the  best  ad- 
vantage, both  for  the  convenience  of  the  pupils  and  for  economy 
in  management  and  support.  It  is  the  unit  of  supervision  in 
the  great  majority  of  states.  For  efficiency  the  supervision  and 
administration  must  be  closely  united.  This  is  possible  in  the 
best  way  only  when  the  unit  of  supervision  and  the  unit  of  or- 
ganization are  identical.  Another  consideration  in  favor  of  the 
county  unit  is  the  question  of  support.  The  county  is  now  the 
unit  in  most  states  for  the  assessment  and  collection  of  taxes,  the 
building  and  care  of  roads  and  bridges,  and  maintenance  of  crim- 
inal and  civil  courts.  To  make  it  the  unit  for  school  purposes 
would  do  away  with  local  district  taxes  for  education,  equalize 
the  tax  rate  for  the  county,  and  distribute  the  cost  of  the  sup- 
port of  the  schools  over  the  entire  county,  so  that  equal  educa- 

i  Adapted  from  "The  Need  of  a  County  Unit,"  U.  S.  Bur.  of  Ed.,  Bul- 
letin No.  30,  1913,  pp.  52-54. 


346  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tional  opportunities  would  prevail  .throughout  the  county.  It 
must  be  clearly  recognized  that  education  is  a  matter  of  concern 
not  only  to  the  local  district  but  also  to  the  county,  and  to  the 
state  and  nation  as  well. 

The  ideal  county  system,  judging  from  the  most  successful 
elements  in  various  state  systems  where  the  county  is  the  unit  of 
organization,  is  probably  as  follows:  The  entire  management 
and  control  of  the  schools  of  the  county  rests  in  the  hands  of  a 
county  board  of  education  composed  of  three,  six,  or  nine  mem- 
bers, one-third  of  whom  are  elected  by  the  voters  of  the  county 
at  each  annual  or  biennial  election.  This  insures  a  continuing 
board.  The  county  board  should  have  the  selection  of  a  county 
superintendent  of  schools,  who  becomes  the  agent  of  the  board 
in  the  management  of  school  affairs.  In  the  administration  of 
the  course  of  study,  however,  the  county  superintendent  should 
be  independent  of  the  county  board,  as  that  is  a  professional  task 
which  requires  the  expert  judgment  of  a  professionally  trained 
man.  The  county  superintendent  should  be  a  man  who  has  had 
a  good  general  education,  professional  education  in  psychology 
and  pedagogy,  and  successful  experience  as  a  teacher.  In  the 
administration  of  the  course  of  study  his  only  responsibility 
should  be  to  the  state  department  of  education. 

The  county  superintendent  should  select  all  teachers  for  the 
county,  final  election  being  a  prerogative  of  the  county  board. 

The  county  board  of  education  should  divide  the  county  into 
school  districts,  for  convenience  in  locating  schools  and  assigning 
pupils  to  the  various  buildings.  In  each  district  there  should  be 
a  trustee  or  a  board  of  trustees,  either  appointed  by  the  county 
board  or  elected  by  the  people  of  the  district.  This  local  board 
would  have  no  absolute  power,  but  would  have  the  immediate 
oversight  of  the  local  school  and  act  in  a  supervisory  capacity  to 
the  county  board  in  all  affairs  dealing  with  their  school. 

School  funds  should  be  assessed  and  expended  on  the  county 
as  a  unit.  If  the  county  contains  independent  school  districts, 
the  school  tax  should  be  levied  on  all  taxable  property  in  the 
county  including  that  in  the  city  districts.  The  funds  collected 
should  be  divided  between  the  county  as  a  whole  and  the  inde- 
pendent districts,  probably  on  the  basis  of  school  population. 
The  basis  of  division  would  depend  upon  local  conditions  in 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  347 

each  state.  The  independent  city  districts  might  raise  further 
funds  for  the  support  of  their  schools,  if  they  so  desired.  The 
school  districts  in  the  county  might  also  raise  an  additional  sum 
for  the  support  of  their  school,  although  in  the  ideal  system  the 
county  funds  should  be  sufficient  for  all  school  purposes.  It  is 
essential  that  the  county  board  of  education  have  power  to  ex- 
pend the  county  funds  wherever  they  are  most  needed,  regard- 
less of  the  portion  of  the  funds  coming  from  any  particular 
school  district. 

The  average  county  in  the  United  States  is  too  large  an  area 
for  adequate  supervision  of  its  rural  schools  by  the  county  super- 
intendent, unless  enough  assistance  is  furnished  him  so  that  the 
schools  may  be  visited  and  the  teachers  assisted  in  their  work 
at  regular,  frequent  periods.  In  the  eighteen  larger  cities  in  the 
United  States  in  1910  there  was  one  supervisor  for  every  nine- 
teen teachers,  devoting  half  or  more  than  half  of  his  time  to 
supervising.  Such  close  supervision  is  probably  not  necessary 
in  the  country  schools.  The  county  superintendent,  however, 
should  have  at  least  one  assistant  devoting  his  entire  time  to 
supervising  the  instructional  work  of  the  schools  for  every  thirty- 
five  or  forty  teachers.  Massachusetts  and  Oregon,  both  of  which 
require  all  schools  to  be  under  expert  supervision,  have  set  the 
maximum  as  fifty  country  schools  in  each  supervisory  district; 
that  is,  fifty  schools  to  one  supervisor.  In  only  a  few  cases,  par- 
ticularly in  Massachusetts,  do  any  supervisors  have  as  many  as 
fifty. 

THE  CHANGE  FROM  AMATEUR  TO  PROFESSIONAL 
TEACHING  * 

HAROLD   W.    FOGHT 

THE  change  from  amateur  to  professional  teaching  may  be 
hastened  in  several  ways:  (1)  Salaries  should  be  increased 
enough  so  a  teacher  with  family  may  live  on  his  income  with- 
out worrying  how  to  make  ends  meet.  Provision  should  also 
be  made,  by  legal  enactment,  for  a  liberal  sliding-scale  salarj^, 
allowing  the  teacher's  income  to  increase  in  direct  ratio  to 

i  Adapted  from  "Efficiency  and  Preparation  of  Rural  School  Teachers/' 
Bulletin  49  (1914),  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education. 


348  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

length  of  service  in  the  same  community.  This  is  only  fair, 
since  teachers  of  the  right  sort  will  unquestionably  grow  in 
value  to  the  community  year  by  year.  (2)  The  entire  school 
plant  should  be  reconstructed  to  answer  present  needs  and  be 
attractive  and  sanitary.  This  would  be  another  inducement  for 
the  teacher  to  spend  his  best  years  in  the  open  country.  (3) 
The  community  should  be  obliged  by  legal  enactment  to  erect 
a  teacher's  cottage  close  by  the  modern  school  building  and  pref- 
erably upon  the  same  grounds.  (4)  Teachers'  colleges,  normal 
schools,  and  other  schools  with  teacher-training  classes  should 
be  encouraged  to  organize  distinct  departments  in  rural  life  and 
rural  teaching,  from  which  to  draw  teachers  prepared  and  will- 
ing to  undertake  work  in  the  new  farm  schools. 


THE  RURAL  HIGH  SCHOOL1 

GEORGE   H.   BETTS   AND   OTIS  E.    HALL 

WILLINGNESS  of  the  rural  community  to  provide  high  school 
education  for  its  youth  is  one  of  the  first  tests  of  its  right  to 
the  loyalty  of  the  young  people.  The  four  years  of  school 
privileges  above  the  elementary  grades  now  so  generally  avail- 
able to  urban  children  must  be  similarly  open  to  country  boys 
and  girls,  else  we  can  not  blame  them  for  deserting  the  farms 
for  the  better  educational  opportunities  afforded  by  the  town. 
The  high  school  must  be  free  and  must  be  accessible  to  the  boys 
and  girls  of  the  farm. 

The  high  school  is  not  yet  free  to  the  majority  of  rural  chil- 
dren, even  if  they  are  willing  to  go  to  town  for  their  high  school 
training.  In  many  states  the  rural  youth  must  himself  pay  a 
tuition  of  from  three  to  five  dollars  a  month  if  he  attends  the 
nearest  town  high  school.  His  district  disclaims  all  responsibility 
for  his  education  after  he  completes  the  elementary  school.  Some 
states,  as  Iowa,  for  example,  have  recently  provided  that  grad- 
uates of  rural  schools  may  attend  the  nearest  high  school,  the 
district  to  pay  the  tuition  fees.  But  in  the  Iowa  law,  reasonable 

i  Adapted  from  "Better  Rural  Schools,"  pp.  258-202.  The  Bobbs-Mer- 
rill  Company,  Indianapolis,  1914. 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  349 

as  the  demand  on  the  district  is,  the  liability  is  limited  to  three 
dollars  and  fifty  cents  a  month,  any  amount  in  excess  of  this  de- 
volving on  the  pupil. 

But  even  where  the  rural  district  freely  pays  the  tuition  in 
the  town  high  school,  such  a  situation  is  far  from  satisfactory. 
The  high  school  training  afforded  rural  children  should  be  in 
rural  high  schools  arid  not  in  town  and  city  schools.  Not  only 
in  curriculum  but  in  spirit  and  in  teaching,  the  rural  high  school 
should  represent  the  life  and  activities  of  the  farm.  If  the  rural 
high  school  is  to  maintain  an  adequate  standard  of  efficiency, 
if  it  is  to  serve  its  patronage  aright,  it  must  take  into  its  pro- 
gram of  studies  training  in  the  concrete  affairs  awaiting  its 
graduates.  There  are  at  present  more  than  two  thousand  public 
and  private  high  schools  in  the  United  States  teaching  agricul- 
ture, but  comparatively  few  of  these  have  actual  country  environ- 
ment, most  of  them  being  situated  in  towns  and  cities.  Such 
is  also  true  of  the  more  than  one  hundred  special  agricultural 
schools  of  secondary  grade 'located  in  seventeen  different  states. 
While  the  agricultural  ^courses  taught  in  the  city  school  are  val- 
uable as  educational  material  and  well  worth  while  from  the 
standpoint  of  general  culture  and  development,  yet  of  neces- 
sity they  lack  the  vitality  and  concreteness  possessed  by  similar 
courses  taught  with  an  immediate  environment  of  farm  life  and 
conditions.  In  the  reorganization  of  rural  education  that  is  now 
going  on,  therefore,  there  must  be  definite  provision  for  the  in- 
stallation of  high  schools  as  a  part  of  the  rural  system. 

The  rural  high  school  is  a  natural  outgrowth  of  the  movement 
toward  consolidation.  It  need  hardly  be  argued  that  the  one- 
room  school  can  never  support  a  high  school  course,  nor  ought 
it  under  any  circumstances  to  undertake  the  teaching  of  high 
school  branches,  except  in  rare  instances  where  a  number  of  the 
elementary  grades  are  lacking  from  want  of  younger  children 
in  attendance.  It  has  been  almost  uniformly  found  that  the 
consolidating  of  a  number  of  elementary  schools  into  one  school 
has  brought  about  a  demand  for  the  introduction  of  high  school 
subjects.  Hence  a  large  majority  of  the  fully  consolidated 
schools  are  now  offering  two  or  even  four  years  of  high-school 
work.  Not  a  few  of  the  consolidated  rural  schools  in  Indiana, 
Ohio  and  many  other  states,  are  fully  equal  in  the  scope  and 


350  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

character  of  the  curriculum  and  in  the  quality  of  teaching  to 
the  best  town  and  city  schools.  The  rural  high  schools  in  such 
communities  are  recognized  by  the  colleges  and  universities,  and 
their  graduates  are  accepted  on  the  same  terms  as  those  from 
urban  schools. 

It  may  therefore  be  concluded  that  the  policy  of  consolida- 
tion ultimately  commits  to  the  introduction  of  rural  high  schools 
as  a  part  of  the  system.  This  is  natural  and  right,  since  con- 
solidation not  only  encourages  the  regularity  of  attendance  that 
allows  completion  of  an  elementary  course  preparatory  to  the 
high  school,  but  also  provides  the  type  of  curriculum  and  teach- 
ing necessary  for  such  preparation.  Further,  the  educational 
standards  of  communities  supporting  consolidated  schools  de- 
mand opportunities  for  high  school  education  for  their  children. 

Certain  regions,  as  in  Illinois,  have  developed  the  township 
system  of  high  schools  independently  of  consolidation.  Many 
of  these  township  secondary  schools  are  of  high  grade,  fully  the 
equal  of  town  and  city  schools;  indeed,  not  a  few  of  them  are 
conducted  in  some  convenient  town  or  cky  of  the  township  and 
are  in  effect  not  rural  high  schools  at  all.  They  offer  the  tra- 
ditional high  school  course  of  study,  are  governed  by  the  typical 
urban  high  school  spirit,  which  looks  not  toward  farming  but  to 
other  lines  of  occupation,  and  are  therefore  not  the  type  of  sec- 
ondary education  most  useful  to  rural  communities. 

In  other  sections  of  the  country,  county  high  schools  prevail, 
the  county  supporting  one  secondary  school  open  to  all  qualified 
residents  within  the  county.  The  county  high  school  can  be 
approved  only  as  a  temporary  expedient  to  supply  secondary  edu- 
cation at  a  time  when  the  economic  ability  is  not  equal  to  the 
burden  of  supporting  high  schools  available  to  every  community. 
In  order  to  be  wholly  efficient,  the  high  school  must,  like  the  ele- 
mentary school,  be  brought  to  the  door  of  those  for  whom  it  is 
intended — and  must  not  require  traveling  half-way  across  a 
county  in  order  to  obtain  its  advantages.  Nor  must  it  demand 
that  the  pupil  leave  his  home  and  enter  the  school  as  a  boarding- 
school.  To  be  truly  a  school  of  the  people  the  rural  high  school 
must  be  connected  with  the  rural  elementary  school,  which  is 
equivalent  to  saying  that  it  will  become  a  part  of  the  consolidated 
school  of  the  future. 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  351 

THE  SPREAD  OF  THE  SCHOOL  MANSE  IDEA 1 

GEORGE  E.    VINCENT 

THE  older  countries  of  Europe  have  long  recognized  that  the 
proper  housing  of  teachers  is  as  much  a  duty  of  school  authori- 
ties as  the  provision  of  class  rooms,  laboratories  and  gymnasia. 
In  Denmark  every  rural  school  has  its  teachers'  house  with 
kitchen  garden  and  flower  garden.  The  schoolmaster  and  his 
assistants  live  on  the  school  grounds.  The  institution  is  not  a 
place  deserted  for  all  but  a  few  hours  in  the  day;  it  is  rather 
a  permanent  residence  of  community  leaders.  Little  wonder  that 
the  Denmark  schoolmaster  holds  his  place  year  after  year.  It  is 
not  unusual  for  a  principal  to  devote  his  whole  life  to  one  or  two 
communities.  Throughout  Germany  practically  the  same  system 
prevails  with  the  same  results  in  educational  efficiency  and  com- 
munity leadership.  In  France  every  rural  teacher  is  provided 
at  public  expense  with  living  quarters.  The  same  system  is  well 
established  and  is  spreading  in  Sweden,  Norway  and  Finland. 

In  various  parts  of  the  United  States  significant  experiments 
in  providing  houses  for  teachers  have  been  made.  In  Hawaii 
one-third  of  the  schools  have  cottages  built  at  public  expense. 
In  the  state  of  Washington  notable  progress  has  been  made  in 
furnishing  living  quarters  for  teachers.  North  Dakota  has 
twenty-two  schools  equipped  in  this  way.  Mississippi,  North 
Carolina,  Illinois,  Tennessee  and  Oklahoma  have  made  promis- 
ing experiments.  In  St.  Louis  County,  Minnesota,  twenty-five 
rural  school  teachers  live,  in  groups  of  two  and  three,  in  cottages 
built  and  completely  furnished  at  public  expense. 

A  teachers'  house  or  school  manse  is  peculiarly  necessary  to 
the  success  of  the  consolidated  rural  school  which,  it  is  now 
agreed,  is  to  be  the  typical  country  school  of  the  future.  There 
should  be  built,  in  connection  with  the  consolidated  school  on  the 
same  grounds  with  the  school  building  and  heated  by  the  same 
plant,  a  permanent  house  for  the  use  of  the  teaching  staff.  This 
building  should  contain  a  wholly  separate  apartment  for 
the  principal  and  his  family,  living  room  and  bed-rooms  for  the 

1  Adapted  from  Annals  of  the  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social 
Science,  Vol.  67:  167-160,  1010. 


352  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

women  teachers,  laundry,  kitchens,  etc.  It  should  be  equipped 
with  a  view  to  providing  in  the  community  a  model  of  tasteful 
and  economical  domestic  furnishing  and  decoration.  The  rentals 
and  other  charges  should  be  so  regulated  as  to  provide  for  the 
maintenance,  insurance,  repairs  and  renewals  of  equipment,  but 
not  for  a  sinking-fund.  The  house  should  be  regarded  as  a  part 
of  the  school  plant  and  included  in' the  regular  bond  issue  for 
construction.  A  privately  owned  manse  in  Illinois  is  netting  8 
per  cent,  on  an  investment  of  $10,000. 

The  manse  has  a  bearing  in  several  ways  upon  the  educational 
work  of  the  school.  Flowers  and  vegetable  gardens  are  natural 
features  of  school  premises  which  are  also  residence  quarters. 
The  domestic  science  work  of  the  school  can  be  connected  in 
valuable  ways  with  the  practical  problems  of  manse  management. 
The  cost  accounting  offers  a  capital  example  of  bookkeeping. 
The  use  of  the  school  as  a  community  center  is  widened  and  its 
value  enhanced.  The  school  as  art  institution  takes  on  a  more 
vital  character  in  the  eyes  of  the  countryside. 

Most  important  of  all  is  the  effect  upon  the  teacher.  Com- 
fortably heated,  well-lighted  quarters,  comradeship  with  col- 
leagues— and  at  the  same  time  personal  privacy — a  satisfying, 
cooperatively  managed  table,  independence  of  the  petty  family 
rivalries  of  a  small  community,  a  recognized  institutional  status, 
combine  to  attract  to  the  consolidated  rural  school  manse  teachers 
of  a  type  which  will  put  the  country  school  abreast  of  the  modern 
educational  movement.  It  is  futile  to  preach  the  gospel  of  sacri- 
fice for  the  cause  of  rural  education.  There  is  no  reason  why 
rural  teachers  should  be  called  upon  to  sacrifice  themselves. 
They  ought  not  to  do  it,  and  they  will  not  do  it.  The  school 
manse  is  not  a  fad,  nor  a  luxury ;  it  is  a  fundamental  necessity. 


AGRICULTURE  AND  THE  CURRICULUM1 

EVELYN   DEWEY 

MOST  states  are  now  recognizing  the  necessity  for  making 
some  effort  to  promote  agricultural  stability  through  the  schools. 

i  Adapted  from  "New  Schools  for  Old,"  pp.  252-259.     Button,  N.  Y.,  1919. 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  353 

Since  the  exodus  from  farms  begins  with  the  young  people,  legis- 
latures realize  that  influences  which  will  affect  children  directly 
may  result  in  checking  that  exodus.  They  also  see  that  regions 
where  farmers  are  poor  and  farm  methods  backward  are  the 
most  seriously  depleted  by  cityward  migration.  It  is  natural 
then  to  think  that  equipping  the  children  to  earn  more  money 
on  the  farm  will  tend  to  keep  them  there.  Therefore,  they  say 
country  schools  ought  to  teach  agriculture;  and  they  pass  laws 
making  so  many  hours  of  study  of  the  subject  obligatory  during 
the  school  year.  They  are  not  teachers  and  it  is  not  their  affair 
to  say  how  it  shall  be  taught ;  this  important  detail  is  left  to  the 
state  educational  administrators.  They  in  turn  find  themselves 
confronted  with  the  duty  of  laying  out  a  course  of  study  which 
shall  fill  up  the  required  number  of  hours,  adopting  text-books 
for  the  pupils'  use  and  telling  every  teacher  what  lessons  they 
shall  give,  regardless  of  varying  agricultural  conditions  in  the 
state.  If  the  farmers  in  the  legislature  are  skeptical  of  the 
results  of  this  method  of  attack,  they  are  still  glad  to  have 
any  attention  paid  to  their  profession,  and  they  are  usually  so 
vague  as  to  a  better  way  of  dealing  with  the  problem  that  they 
gladly  give  their  support  to  such  bills.  Every  country  teacher 
knows  the  futility  of  simply  going  through  the  required  lessons 
in  the  agricultural  text-book,  in  order  to  make  better  farmers 
or  keep  children  on  the  farm.  The  prejudice  against  book  farm- 
ing is  very  general  in  farming  regions.  This  fact  alone  dis- 
counts most  of  the  knowledge  that  pupils  might  gain  from  their 
lessons.  Besides  this,  the  same  text-book  is  used  for  a  whole 
state,  regardless  of  the  particular  conditions  of  soil,  climate,  mar- 
kets, etc. ;  so  that  it  is  entirely  a  matter  of  chance  if  the  informa- 
tion has  any  application  to  the  agricultural  needs  of  a  particular 
district.  A  visitor  asked  the  teacher  in  a  typical  one-room 
school  if  she  taught  any  agriculture  or  gardening ;  the  reply  was : 
"No,  we  are  not  able  to  manage  any  at  all."  Later  the  teacher 
returned  to  the  subject,  saying:  "Of  course  we  use  the  lessons 
in  agriculture  prescribed  in  the  state  curriculum."  This  indi- 
cates the  value  the  teachers  themselves  attach  to  this  type  of 
agricultural  teaching  if  it  is  not  vitalized  by  the  addition  of 
practical  work  adapted  to  local  conditions. 

Even  if  it  were  desirable  to  teach  grade  pupils  trades,  farm- 


354  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

ing  does  not  lend  itself  to  the  usual  state  curriculum,  or  to  any 
prescribed  methods.  It  is  a  profession,  not  a  mechanical  trade 
where  practice  in  routine  acts  brings  skill,  and  one  set  of  facts 
illustrates  all  its  principles.  Young  children  may  be  able  to 
understand  these  general  principles,  but  reciting  long  prescrip- 
tions for  soil  treatment  under  theoretical  conditions  for  crops 
they  have  never  seen,  has  no  bearing  whatever  on  their  future 
as  farmers,  and  hinders  their  education  as  it  takes  time  which 
might  be  spent  in  worth-while  work. 

If  there  is  nothing  educational  in  abstract  lessons  in  agricul- 
ture, engaging  in  agriculture  with  an  open  mind  is  an  education 
in  itself.  City  and  country  teachers  alike  are  agreed  in  testify- 
ing to  the  value  of  real  work  in  gardens  for  children  of  all  ages. 
The  work  is  valuable  because  through  it  the  children  learn  so 
much  about  the  commonest  things  about  them,  plants,  earth, 
water  and  sunshine,  not  because  it  teaches  them  processes  which 
will  enable  them  to  earn  more  money  when  they  grow  up.  The 
teaching  method  which  looks  to  the  environment  of  the  child 
to  furnish  most  of  the  class-room  material  makes  the  teaching 
of  agriculture  a  necessity.  When  children  learn  to  understand 
the  things  around  them  and  learn  the  possibilities  and  rela- 
tionships of  the  local  environment,  there  is  no  danger  of  train- 
ing mere  technicians,  who  are  capable  only  of  mechanical  work, 
nor  yet  of  developing  abstract  theorists,  whose  contact  with  life 
is  confined  to  books  and  ideas. 

Using  the  world  for  a  text-book  insures  the  children's  being 
fitted  to  live  in  that  world  efficiently.  Since  the  modern  world 
even  in  a  simple  farming  district  is  much  too  complicated  to 
give  one  person  a  grasp  of  all  its  phases,  the  important  thing  in 
education  is  to  give  every  person  a  good  working  point  of  view 
towards  life.  Mrs.  Harvey  believes  that  there  are  two  essential 
sides  to  this  point  of  view,  and  that  it  is  equally  important  that 
pupils  acquire  them  both  in  their  school  life.  The  first  is  suffi- 
cient practical  knowledge  of  the  industrial  and  economic  life 
about  them  from  the  side  of  its  underlying  principles  to  insure 
their  being  able  as  adults  to  control  their  material  environment, 
not  to  be  at  its  mercy.  This  work  should  always  be  taught  with 
scientific  principles  and  social  relationships  in  mind ;  because  it 
is  no  part  of  the  duty  of  the  public  schools  of  a  democracy  to  give 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  355 

trade  training.  It  is  their  duty  to  teach  so  that  every  one  can 
approach  a  trade  with  general  skill  and  critical  faculties  de- 
veloped so  that  he  can  learn  the  trade  as  a  whole,  not  simply  one 
process  of  it.  This  involves  for  a  school  in  an  agricultural  com- 
munity, not  only  theory  and  practice  in  gardening  and  farm- 
ing, but  general  book  work  which  will  enable  the  pupil  to  under- 
stand the  business  aspects  of  farming,  its  place  in  national  life, 
markets,  buying  and  selling;  the  relations  of  the  farmer  to  the 
rest  of  the  world. 

The  other  side  to  this  point  of  view  is  the  understanding  of 
the  rest  of  the  things  in  life,  which  is  just  as  important  in  a 
democracy  as  the  ability  to  earn  a  living.  Every  child  should 
have  a  chance  to  learn  how  to  think  for  himself ;  how  to  under- 
stand national  and  social  aims,  how  to  appreciate  beauty  and 
wholesome  pleasure,  how  to  be  healthy,  self-reliant  and  cour- 
ageous, and  how  to  find  out  things  for  himself.  Real  work  pre- 
sented in  the  right  way  promotes  both  these  phases  of  efficient 
social  equipment.  It  no  longer  becomes  necessary  to  argue  the 
advantages  of  vocational  versus  cultural  teaching;  the  teacher 
can  devote  her  entire  time  to  giving  her  pupils  an  education. 
No  demonstration  is  necessary  to  prove  the  place  of  agriculture 
in  the  curriculum  of  a  school  which  sets  out  to  educate  farm 
children.  It  belongs  there  just  as  much  as  an  adjustment  of 
the  program  to  the  climate,  or  of  the  seating  capacity  to  the 
number  of  pupils. 

The  results  of  a  curriculum  made  up  and  starting  from  the 
child's  environment  are  sure  to  be  both  vocational  and  cultural. 
The  difference  between  teaching  a  trade  in  school  and  using  the 
prevailing  industrial  conditions  for  'education,  can  be  demon- 
strated by  a  description  of  Mrs.  Harvey's  methods  of  using 
agriculture  in  the  curriculum  of  Porter,  better  than  by  a  more 
theoretical  discussion.  From  the  very  first  she  saw  that  the 
children  could  be  brought  up  to  adopt  the  best  farm  methods 
as  a  matter  of  course,  if  their  intelligence  could  be  enlisted  at 
the  outset.  She  selected  the  vegetable  and  flower  gardens  as  the 
best  point  of  attack  for  the  school.  Owing  to  conditions  in  the 
corn  belt  little  attention  has  been  paid  to  the  garden  on  the  indi- 
vidual farms.  The  farmer,  busy  with  the  planting,  cultivation 
and  harvesting  of  the  larger  crops,  had  come  to  feel  that  he 


356  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

could  spare  no  time  for  the  garden.  The  work  of  gardening  fell 
to  the  lot  of  the  already  overworked  woman.  Usually,  there- 
fore, the  plot  cultivated  was  small  and  the  vegetables  were  few 
and  insufficient  in  variety  and  quantity.  By  enlisting  the  chil- 
dren in  garden  work  several  purposes  were  served.  The  garden 
serves  as  a  laboratory  for  teaching  the  fundamental  principles 
of  agriculture.  The  children  find  a  healthy  summer  occupation, 
and  those  who  are  too  young  for  the  heavier  farm  work  are 
unconsciously  acquiring  knowledge  and  skill  which  is  certain  to 
make  farm  life  attractive  and  satisfying  to  them  eventually 
while  it  gives  them  an  immediate  consciousness  of  and  pride  in 
adding  to  the  family  comfort  and  in  saving  "mother's"  strength. 
School  gardening  can  be  made  a  valuable  adjunct  to  country 
schools  in  the  corn  belt  because  of  its  educative  value  to  the 
child  and  its  effect  upon  the  community  as  well.  In  truck  grow- 
ing regions  some  other  form  of  agricultural  work  should  be 
employed  because  children  are  pressed  into  service  at  home  so 
young  that  gardens  lose  their  educational  value.  In  using  the 
environment,  emphasis  must  always  be  put  upon  the  principles 
involved  and  immediate  things  should  be  used  as  stepping  stones 
to  more  remote  things.  The  gardening  work  was  in  no  sense 
supposed  to  react  immediately  upon  family  incomes  by  pro- 
ducing vegetables  that  could  be  sold;  but  was  expected  to  react 
indirectly  through  the  added  understanding  of  agricultural 
principles  and  through  a  raised  standard  of  living.  Through  the 
school  garden  the  child  at  an  age  when  he  is  forming  tastes  and 
habits  for  life  can  learn  all  the  fundamentals  of  farming  in 
which  he  is  expected  to  take  an  interest  later  on. 


THE  MOONLIGHT  SCHOOLS  OF  KENTUCKY1 

CORA    WILSON    STEWART 

THE  various  impressions  which  have  prevailed  throughout  the 
country  in  regard  to  moonlight  schools  have  been  amusing  in- 
deed. Some  have  imagined  them  to  be  schools  where  children 
studied  and  played  and  scampered  on  the  green  like  fairies  in 
the  moonlight.  Others  have  believed  them  to  be  ideal  courting 

i  Adapted  from  Survey,  Vol.  35:  429-31,  Jan.,  1916. 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  357 

schools,  where  lovers  strolled  arm  in  arm,  quoted  poetry,  and 
told  the  old,  old  story  by  the  light  of  a  bewitching  moon.  Others 
have  speculated  upon  their  being  schools  where  moonshiners, 
youthful  and  aged,  were  instructed  in  the  most  scientific  methods 
of  extracting  the  juice  from  the  corn,  and,  at  the  same  time, 
the  most  secretive,  to  prevent  government  interference. 

When  I  was  superintendent  of  Rowan  county  (Kentucky) 
schools,  I  served  as  secretary  to  a  number  of  illiterate  folk — a 
mistaken  kindness.  I  ought  to  have  been  teaching  them  to  read 
and  write.  Among  these  folk  was  a  woman  whose  children  had 
grown  up  without  education,  except  one  daughter,  who  had  had 
limited  schooling.  She  had  gone  to  Chicago,  and  there  had 
profited  by  that  one  advantage  at  least  which  the  city  possesses 
over  the  rural  district,  the  night  school.  Her  letters  were  the 
only  source  of  joy  that  came  into  that  aged  mother's  life,  and 
the  drafts  which  they  contained  were  the  only  means  of  reliev- 
ing her  necessities. 

Often  she  brought  the  daughter's  letters  over  the  hill,  seven 
miles,  to  the  county  seat,  for  me  to  read  and  answer  for  her. 
After  an  absence  of  some  six  weeks,  she  came  in  one  morning 
fondling  a  letter.  I  anticipated  her  mission,  and  said:  "A  let- 
ter from  your  daughter  ?  Shall  I  read  and  answer  it  for  you  ? ' ' 

With  dignity  and  pride,  she  replied:  "I. kin  answer  it  fer 
myself — I  've  lamed  to  read  and  write. ' ' 

In  amazement  I  questioned  her,  and  this  is  the  story  she  told : 
'  *  Sometimes  I  couldn  't  get  over  here  to  see  you  and  the  '  cricks ' 
would  be  up  between  me  and  the  neighbors,  or  the  neighbors 
would  be  away  from  home,  and  I  could  not  get  a  letter  read 
and  answered  for  three  or  four  days ;  and,  anyway,  it  jist  seemed 
like  thar  wuz  a  wall  'twixt  Jane  and  me  all  the  time,  and  I 
wanted  to  read  with  my  own  eyes  what  she  had  writ  with  her 
own  hand.  So  I  went  to  a  store  and  I  bought  me  a  speller,  and 
I  sot  up  at  nights  till  midnight,  and  sometimes  till  daylight — 
and  I  learned  to  read  and  write. ' ' 

And  to  demonstrate  her  accomplishment,  she  slowly  spelled 
out  the  words  of  that  precious  letter,  and  she  sat  down  and, 
under  my  direction,  answered  it — wrote  her  first  letter,  an 
achievement  which  pleased  her  immeasurably,  and  one  which 
must  have  pleased  the  absent  Jane  still  more. 


358  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Shortly  after  this,  there  came  into  my  office  one  morning  a 
middle-aged  man,  handsome  and  intelligent  in  appearance. 
While  waiting  for  me  to  dispatch  the  business  in  hand,  I  gave 
him  two  books.  He  fingered  the  leaves  hurriedly,  like  a  child, 
turned  the  books  over  and  looked  at  the  backs,  and  laid  them 
down  with  a  sigh.  Knowing  the  scarcity  of  interesting  reading 
through  the  country,  I  proffered  him  the  loan  of  these  two  books. 
He  shook  his  head,  and  said:  "No,  I  cannot  read  or  write." 
And  then  the  tears  came  into  the  eyes  of  that  stalwart  man, 
and  he  added:  "I  would  give  twenty  years  of  my  life  if  I 
could." 

A  few  evenings  later  I  attended  an  entertainment  in  a  rural 
district  school.  A  stalwart  lad  of  twenty  sang  a  beautiful  bal- 
lad, mostly  original,  but  partly  borrowed  from  his  English  an- 
cestors. When  he  finished,  amid  deafening  applause,  I  went 
over  and  congratulated  him.  "Dennis,  that  was  a  beautiful  bal- 
lad— it  is  worthy  of  publication.  Will  you  write  it  down  for 
me?"  "I  would  if  I  could  write,"  he  replied,  crestfallen,  "but 
I  cannot.  I've  thought  of  a  hundred  of  'em  better 'n  that,  but 
I  'd  forget  'em  before  anybody  came  along  to  set  'em  down. ' ' 

These  three  incidents  led  directly  to  the  establishment  of  the 
moonlight  schools.  Not  merely  the  call  of  three  individuals  was 
sounded,  but  the  appeal  of  three  classes:  illiterate  mothers  sep- 
arated from  their  absent  children  farther  than  sea  or  land  or  any 
other  condition  than  death;  middle-aged  men  shut  out  from  the 
world  of  books  and  unable  to  cast  their  ballot  with  intelligence 
and  in  secrecy  and  security ;  young  people  who  possess  undevel- 
oped talents  which  might  yet  be  made  to  contribute  much  to 
the  world  of  literature,  art,  science  or  invention. 

The  public  school  teachers  of  the  county  were  called  together. 
These  specific  incidents  were  related  to  them,  and  the  fact  that 
there  were  1,152  such  men  and  women  whom  the  schools  of  the 
past  had  left  behind  was  dwelt  upon.  The  teachers  were  asked 
to  volunteer  for  night  service,  to  open  their  schools  on  moonlight 
evenings — to  give  these  people  a  chance. 

This  they  cheerfully  agreed  to  do,  and  on  Labor  Day,  Septem- 
ber 4,  1911,  these  teachers  celebrated  by  visiting  every  farm- 
house and  every  hovel,  inviting  people  of  all  classes  to  attend 
the  moonlight  schools  which  were  to  open  their  sessions  the  next 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  359 

evening.  They  expected  some  response  and  hoped  for  from  one 
to  three  pupils  in  attendance  at  each  school — perhaps  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  the  county  over. 

These  country  folk  had  all  the  excuses  that  any  toil-worn 
people  ever  had.  There  were  rugged  roads  to  travel,  high  hills 
to  climb,  streams  without  bridges  to  cross,  children  to  lead, 
and  babes  to  carry;  but  they  were  not  seeking  excuses,  they 
were  seeking  knowledge.  And  so  they  came.  They  came,  some 
singly  and  alone;  they  came  hurrying  in  groups;  they  came  trav- 
eling for  miles;  they  came  carrying  babes  in  arms;  they  came 
bent  with  age  and  leaning  on  canes;  they  came  1,200  strong. 

The  youngest  student  was  eighteen,  and  the  oldest  eight3r-six. 
Some  learned  to  write  their  names  the  first  evening,  and  some 
required  two  evenings  for  this  feat.  Their  joy  in  this  achieve- 
ment, simple  though  it  was,  is  beyond  the  power  of  pen  to  de- 
scribe. They  wrote  their  names  on  trees,  fences,  posts,  barns, 
barrel-staves,  and  every  available  scrap  of  paper.  Those  who 
possessed  even  meager  means  drew  it  out  of  hiding  and  deposited 
it  in  bank,  writing  their  checks  and  signing  their  names  with 
childish  pride.  Letters  soon  began  to  go  to  loved  ones  in  other 
counties  and  far  distant  states. 

Usually  the  first  of  these  letters  came  to  the  office  of  the 
county  superintendent.  Romantic  in  the  history  of  this  move- 
ment is  the  fact  that  the  first  three  letters  written  from  the 
moonlight  schools  came  in  this  order:  the  first  from  a  mother 
who  had  children  absent  in  the  West ;  the  second  from  the  man 
who  had  said  he  would  give  twenty  years  of  his  life  if  he  could 
read  and  write,  and  the  third  from  the  boy  who  would  forget 
his  ballads  before  anybody  came  along  to  set  them  down. 

Educators  were  skeptical  of  the  plan,  and  freely  predicted 
that  after  the  novelty  had  worn  off,  the  interest  would  wane. 
But  in  the  second  session,  the  first  year's  record  was  surpassed 
in  every  particular:  1,600  were  enrolled,  350  learned  to  read 
and  write,  and  a  man  eighty-seven  years  old  entered  and  put  to 
shame  the  record  of  the  proud  il school-girl"  of  eighty-six  of  the 
year  before. 

There  were  many  incidents  of  really  remarkable  individual  de- 
velopment. A  man  who  had  labored  for  years  at  $1.50  a  day 
enrolled,  specializing  in  mathematics — in  that  particular  branch 


360  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

in  which  he  was  interested,  lumbering.  At  the  end  of  the  six- 
weeks'  session  he  was  promoted  at  a  salary  double  that  which  he 
had  received  before.  It  was  not  unusual  in  traveling  over  the 
county  to  find  in  the  day  schools  here  and  there,  after  the  moon- 
light schools  had  closed,  a  man  or  a  woman  seated  at  the  desk 
with  a  child. 

In  March,  1913,  the  teachers  of  Rowan  county  met  in  the  office 
of  the  county  superintendent  and  declared  their  determination 
to  wipe  illiteracy  out  of  that  county  that  year.  First,  the  school 
trustees  were  induced  to  take  a  census  of  the  illiterates.  When 
this  was  completed,  an  illiteracy  record  was  made.  On  the  rec- 
ord was  not  only  the  name  and  the  age  of  every  illiterate  in  the 
county,  but  his  history  as  well:  his  home  environment,  family 
ties,  religious  faith,  political  belief,  weaknesses,  tastes  and  pe- 
culiarities, and  the  influence  or  combination  of  influences  through 
which  he  might  be  reached  in  case  the  teacher  failed  with  him. 

Each  teacher  was  given  a  list  of  the  illiterates  in  her  district 
when  she  opened  her  day  school.  She  called  on  these  people  and 
cultivated  their  acquaintance  before  the  moonlight  schools  began 
their  sessions.  The  home  department  of  the  moonlight  schools 
was  established  that  year,  in  which  the  indifferent,  the  disin- 
clined, the  stubborn  and  the  decrepit  were  taught  by  the  teacher 
or  by  some  one  under  the  teacher's  direction  at  home.  "One 
for  every  one,"  was  the  slogan  which  brought  into  service  doc- 
tors, who  could  teach  their  convalescent  patients ;  ministers  who 
might  find  a  pupil  among  the  members  of  their  flocks;  stenog- 
raphers who  could  interest  waitresses  in  the  small-town  hotels, 
and  any  others  who  would  seek  and  teach  a  pupil.  Each  dis- 
trict was  striving  to  be  the  first  to  completely  stamp  out  illit- 
eracy. 

We  tried,  by  every  means,  fair  and  foul,  to  get  illiteracy  out 
of  the  county  to  the  last  individual.  At  the  close  of  the  third 
session,  we  had  but  a  straggling  few  who  could  not  read  and 
write — twenty-three  in  all,  mainly  defectives,  invalids  and  the 
blind. 

Meanwhile,  the  moonlight  schools  had  been  extended  to  twenty- 
five  other  counties  in  the  state,  and  whether  it  was  in  distillery 
section  or  among  the  tenant  class,  or  in  mining  region  or  among 
the  farmers,  it  was  ever  with  the  same  results.  Men  and  women 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  361 

thronged  to  the  schools,  striving  to  make  up  for  the  time  they 
had  lost,  and  they  pleaded  for  a  longer  term  when  the  session 
closed. 

The  Governor  of  Kentucky,  seeing  the  determined  warfare 
which  was  being  waged  against  illiteracy,  urged  in  his  message 
to  the  legislature  that  an  Illiteracy  Commission  be  created  to 
drive  illiteracy  from  the  state.  The  measure  creating  this  com- 
mission passed  the  legislature  of  1914  without  a  dissenting  vote, 
and  the  seat  of  the  war  against  illiteracy  in  Kentucky  was  trans- 
ferred from  the  Court  House  in  the  county  seat  of  Rowan  to 
the  state  capitol  at  Frankfort.  The  commission  is  directing  the 
state-wide  campaign  to  remove  illiteracy  from  Kentucky  by  the 
time  the  census  of  1920  is  taken. 

One  of  the  first  activities  of  the  Illiteracy  Commission  was  to 
enlist  the  various  organizations  in  the  state  to  aid  the  teachers 
in  their  warfare  on  illiteracy.  The  Kentucky  Educational  As- 
sociation was  induced  to  pass  a  resolution  expressing  commenda- 
tion and  pledging  its  support.  The  Kentucky  Press  Association 
was  approached  for  assistance,  which  was  cheerfully  given.  The 
Kentucky  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs,  the  Society  of  Colonial 
Dames,  and  other  organizations,  were  among  those  to  early  lend 
their  aid. 

Governor  James  B.  Mc^Creery  of  Kentucky  issued,  in  Septem- 
ber, 1914,  the  first  proclamation  against  illiteracy  in  the  history 
of  the  world,  urging  all  classes  to  join  in  the  fight.  Again,  in 
1915,  he  issued  a  similar  proclamation.  Kentucky  has  celebrated 
"no  illiteracy"  Sunday  in  October,  for  the  past  two  successive 
years.  A  galaxy  of  one  hundred  and  twenty  speakers  covered 
the  state  during  the  summer  of  1915,  condemning  the  evils  of 
illiteracy  and  advocating  moonlight  schools  as  a  remedy.  These 
speakers  consisted  of  the  governor,  state  officials,  United  States 
senators,  congressmen,  judges  of  the  court  of  appeals,  circuit 
judges,  prominent  educators  and  club  women. 

Moonlight  school  graduates  have  been  asked  to  volunteer  to 
teach  at  least  one  to  read  and  write.  Individuals  and  organiza- 
tions have  offered  prizes  to  stimulate  teachers  in  their  moonlight 
schoolwork.  A  teacher  who  has  taught  sixty-two  illiterates  dur- 
ing a  session  this  year  believes  that  he  is  very  close  to  the  $100 
state  prize.  Yet  he,  like  thousands  of  other  volunteer  teachers, 


362  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

trudges  back  to  the  school  at  night  with  no  thought  of  reward, 
save  that  of  the  joy  of  service  and  the  emancipation  of  those  en- 
slaved in  the  bondage  of  illiteracy. 

Kentucky  will  owe  her  public  school  teachers  a  debt  that  can 
never  be  estimated  when  they  shall  have  wiped  out  her  illiteracy, 
which  they  propose  to  do  by  1920,  and  in  many  counties  will  do 
even  before  that  time.  That  county  in  the  state  which  has  the 
largest  percentage  of  illiteracy  has  taught  1,000  persons  in  the 
moonlight  schools  this  year  to  read  and  write,  while  many  coun- 
ties have  taught  two  and  three  hundred,  besides  raising  the 
standard  of  education  of  many  semi-illiterates  and  others  who 
have  enrolled. 

The  moonlight  school  curriculum  embraces  more  than  read- 
ing and  writing:  It  includes  arithmetic,  history,  geography, 
civics,  agriculture,  horticulture,  home  economics  and  road  build- 
ing. A  special  method  of  writing  is  taught — a  moonlight  school 
tablet,  with  indented  letters  for  acquiring  the  form,  and  ruled 
sheets  with  wide  spaces,  designed  especially  for  adult  pupils. 
Readers  have  also  been  prepared  for  such  beginners,  dealing  with 
roads,  silos,  seed-testing,  crop  rotation,  piping  water  into  the 
house,  value  of  the  daily  bath,  extermination  of  the  fly,  ways  of 
cooking,  and  such  problems  as  the  people  are  facing  every  day. 
For  example,  a  lesson  on  roads  reads : 

This  is  a  road. 

It  is  a  good  road. 

It  will  save  my  time. 

It  will  save  my  team. 

It  will  save  my  wagon. 

The  good  road  is  my  friend. 

I  will  work  for  the  good  road. 

The  script  lessons  follows:  "I  will  work  for  the  good  road," 
which  pledge  the  student  writes  ten  times,  and  if  the  law  of 
suggestion  works,  he  becomes  truly  a  friend  and  promoter  of 
good  roads. 

Moonlight  schools  are  conducted  in  seventeen  states,  Okla- 
homa, Alabama  and  North  Carolina  following  closely  Kentucky 's 
lead.  These  schools  minister  equally  to  illiterate  Indians  in 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  363 

Oklahoma,  illiterate  negroes  in  Alabama,  and  illiterate  whites  in 
North  Carolina  and  other  states.  California  and  New  Mexico, 
the  last  states  to  adopt  the  institution,  are  finding  it  useful  in 
the  education  of  the  immigrant  population  of  the  one,  and  the 
large  Mexican  population  of  the  other. 

There  are  5,516,163  illiterates  in  this  country,  according  to 
the  federal  census  of  1910 — more  than  the  entire  population  of 
Denmark,  also  more  than  the  population  of  Sweden  or  Norway, 
and  of  several  other  prosperous  countries.  Some  countries 
thrive,  support  churches,  schools  and  industries  on  the  number 
of  people  that  America  is  permitting  to  go  to  waste.  Illiteracy 
in  the  United  States  is  largely  a  rural  problem ;  it  exists  in  rural 
districts  in  double  the  proportion  found  in  urban  communities. 
Until  the  moonlight  school  was  established,  there  was  absolutely 
no  provision  for  the  education  of  illiterate  adults  in  rural  sec- 
tions, and  there  is  none  in  urban  districts  now,  save  the  city  night 
school,  which  receives  illiterate  foreigners,  but  in  most  cities,  at 
least,  does  not  coax  or  compel  them  to  attend. 

It  is  the  privilege  of  American  public  school  teachers  to  wipe 
out  America's  illiteracy.  Back  to  the  school-house  twenty  to 
twenty-four  evenings,  and,  with  proper  organization,  the  deed  is 
done ;  for  experience  has  proved  that  all  but  abnormal  adults 
can  escape  from  illiteracy  in  a  month's  time,  and  some  in  even 
less. 

Could  there  be  more  valiant  and  heroic  service  to  humanity 
than  the  stamping  out  of  illiteracy,  the  most  insidious  foe  of  the 
nation  ? 


A  NATIONAL  PROGRAM  FOR  EDUCATION  * 

(A  statement  issued  by  the  National  Education  Association  Commission 
on  the  emergency  in  education  and  the  program  for  readjustment  during 
and  after  the  war.) 

THE  time  has  clearly  come  when  we  in  America  must  think 
and  plan  for  education  on  a  scale  commensurate  with  the  magni- 
tude of  the  task  that  lies  before  us  and  in  terms  consistent  with 

i  Adapted  from  Commission  Series  No.  1,  pp.  10-20;  National  Educa- 
tion Association,  Washington,  D.  C.,  June,  1918. 


364  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  obligations  that  the  coming  generations  will  be  called  upon 
to  discharge.  Heretofore  our  educational  policies  have  been  con- 
fined and  cramped  by  the  narrow  boundaries  of  our  local  units 
of  school  taxation  and  control.  Our  conception  of  education  has 
been  essentially  a  neighborhood  conception.  This  principle  of 
local  responsibility  for  the  support  and  control  of  schools  has 
undeniable  elements  of  strength.  It  is  an  expression  of  that  will 
to  independence,  self-reliance,  and  individual  initiative  which 
constitutes  so  striking  a  quality  of  American  democracy.  It 
must  not  and  need  not  be  sacrificed.  But  while  the  interests  of 
the  local  community  must  still  be  the  determining  factor  in  school 
organization  and  administration,  events  are  rapidly  teaching  us 
that  our  local  interests  are  genuine  interests  only  when  framed 
in  harmony  with  our  national  needs  and  our  international  obliga- 
tions and  responsibilities. 

There  can,  then,  be  no  fundamental  antagonism  between  local 
and  national  needs.  There  are  certain  phases  of  public  educa- 
tion with  which  the  federal  government  may  properly  concern 
itself  to  the  immediate  and  permanent  advantage  of  the  schools, 
and  with  an  effect  upon  local  initiative  and  local  control  that 
will  be  stimulating  and  salutary.  Indeed,  the  outstanding  weak- 
nesses and  inequities  of  our  public  schools  to-day  are  such  as  to 
make  their  reform  on  a  national  scale  impossible  without  federal 
cooperation,  and  here  as  elsewhere  in  a  true  democracy  it  is  to 
cooperation  and  not  to  domination  that  we  must  look  for  the 
solution  of  our  problems. 

It  is  futile  to  speak  of  our  public  schools  as  the  bulwark  of 
American  democracy  when  tens  of  thousands  of  the  teachers  in 
these  schools  are  only  sixteen,  seventeen,  eighteen,  or  nineteen 
years  old ;  when  more  than  one  hundred  thousand  are  less  than 
twenty-two  years  old ;  when  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  million  have 
not  passed  the  age  of  twenty-five. 

There  are  no  fewer  than  five  million  children  in  the  United 
States  to-day  whose  teachers  have  not  passed  the  age  of  twenty- 
one,  and  whose  teachers  have  themselves  had  as  preparation  for 
their  responsible  work  not  more  than  one,  two,  or  rarely  three 
or  four  years  of  education  beyond  the  eighth  grade  of  the  com- 
mon schools.  Every  six  or  seven  years  these  five  million  children 
are  replaced  by  another  group  equally  numerous,  subject  to  the 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  365 

same  limited  opportunities  for  instruction  and  guidance.  In 
the  course  of  a  single  generation,  these  groups  now  aggregating 
twenty  million  men  and  women  will  be  among  the  voting  citi- 
zens of  the  nation.  The  intelligence  that  directs  their  skill  and 
industry  will  be  an  important  factor  in  determining  the  nation's 
wealth.  The  ideas  and  ideals  which  were  impressed  upon  them  in 
school  will  form  the  background  against  which  they  will  interpret 
and  evaluate  the  nation's  policies.  Their  judgment,  guiding 
their  votes,  may  make  or  mar  the  nation's  destiny. 

It  is  in  the  little  schools  of  the  villages  and  the  rural  districts 
that  the  youngest,  most  experienced,  and  least  well-trained  teach- 
ers are  to  be  found.  Little  schools  they  are  individually,  but 
large  in  the  aggregate  and  big  with  national  significance,  for  in 
them  more  than  one-half  of  the  nation's  children  are  enrolled. 
And  of  all  phases  of  the  teaching  service  that  which  is  repre- 
sented by  these  rural  and  village  schools  is  the  most  exacting, 
the  most  arduous,  and  in  many  ways  the  most  responsible. 
While  the  teacher  of  the  graded  city  school  instructs  a  single 
group  of  children  approximately  equal  in  age  and  attainment, 
the  rural  teacher  must  cover  a  wide  range  of  subjects  with  many 
groups,  adapting  himself,  a  score  of  times  each  day,  to  the  vary- 
ing levels  of  growth  and  attainment.  While  the  city  teacher  is 
helped  by  expert  principals  and  supervisors,  the  rural  teacher  is 
all  but  absolutely  isolated,  and  must  supply  through  his  own 
initiative,  enthusiasm,  and  resourcefulness  many  of  the  elements 
of  good  teaching  that  one  working  in  an  urban  community  gains 
through  contact  with  his  fellows. 

And  yet  the  environment  of  these  small  and  isolated  schools  is 
in  many  ways  the  best  that  could  be  provided  for  the  education 
of  boys  and  girls.  The  equipment  of  libraries,  shops,  and  labora- 
tories may  be  lacking,  but  potential  resources  in  abundance  lie 
round  about.  What  is  needed  is  the  mind  to  interpret  them 
and  translate  their  lessons.  But  this  is  the  hardest  kind  of 
teaching,  far  harder  than  to  assign  lessons  in  books  and  hear 
recitations.  It  is  a  kind  of  teaching  that  requires  knowledge, 
insight,  and  skill  to  be  obtained  only  through  a  broad  and 
thorough  training  followed  by  a  faithful  and  carefully  super- 
vised apprenticeship. 

Nor  does  this  tell  the  whole  story  of  the  possibilities  and  diffi- 


366  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

culties  of  rural-school  teaching.  The  right  man  or  the  right 
woman  in  this  office  may  become  a  real  leader  in  the  community, 
knowing  its  people  intimately  and  sympathetically.  Under  his 
or  her  tactful  direction,  the  schoolhouse  may  become  a  true  com- 
munity center,  enriching  the  social  life  with  a  round  of  whole- 
some activities.  It  would  be  hard  indeed  to  overestimate  what 
two  hundred  thousand  mature,  well  trained,  and  permanently 
employed  teachers  in  these  small  schools  would  mean  both  to 
rural  America  and  to  the  nation  as  a  whole.  They  could  do  for 
America  and  American  democracy  what  the  village  dominies 
have  done  for  Scotland  and  what  the  rural  schoolmasters  have 
done  for  Denmark  and  Norway.  They  could  make  these  lonely 
outposts  of  culture  what  they  should  be,  strategic  centers  of  na- 
tional strength  and  national  idealism — for  outposts  though  they 
may  be  in  one  sense,  in  another  and  a  deeper  sense  these  little 
schools,  of  all  our  educational  institutions,  are  closest  to  what  is 
formative  and  virile  and  abiding  in  our  national  life. 

The  urban  centers  are  not  wholly  blameless  for  this  neglect 
of  the  rural  school.  They  have  required  in  general  higher 
standards  of  maturity  and  preparation  for  their  teachers,  but 
they  have  fallen  far  short  of  recognizing  public-school  service  as 
a  worthy  profession  or  of  setting  a  standard  of  recognition  and 
rewards  that  might  well  have  had  a  stimulating  effect  upon  the 
outlying  rural  districts.  By  limiting  its  teaching-appointments 
especially  in  the  elementary  schools  to  young  women  living  with 
their  parents  in  the  home  community,  the  typical  American  city 
has  been  able  to  recruit  its  teachers  at  the  smallest  possible  wage. 
The  effect  of  this  upon  the  development  of  a  true  professional 
spirit  among  the  teachers  can  be  readily  conjectured.  It  has 
kept  the  standards  of  professional  preparation  deplorably  low, 
it  has  encouraged  young  women  to  enter  the  work  of  teaching 
merely  as  a  temporary  occupation,  and  in  many  cases  it  has  led 
the  public  to  look  upon  teaching-appointments,  not  as  positions 
of  trust  and  honor,  but  as  jobs  to  be  distributed,  either  to  the 
deserving  poor  or  to  those  who  can  enlist  "influence"  in  their 
behalf. 

Again  it  is  beside  the  point  to  say  that  there  are  communities 
that  have  risen  far  beyond  this  primitive  estimate  of  the  teacher's 
work.  There  are  many  such  communities,  it  is  true,  but  their 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  367 

influence  again  has  been  local  and  circumscribed.  It  has  not 
sufficed  to  raise  the  general  level  of  the  teacher's  calling.  It  is 
not,  indeed,  through  individual  and  local  advances  that  the  na- 
tion's problem  is  to  be  solved. 

There  is,  in  fact,  but  one  way  in  which  the  evils  that  are  in- 
herent in  the  transient  and  unprofessional  character  of  the  gen- 
eral teaching  population  can  be  remedied,  and  that  is  the  crea- 
tion of  conditions  that  will  make  teaching  throughout  the  length 
and  breadth  of  the  land,  a  permanent  occupation,  a  real  career. 
Larger  appropriations  for  teachers'  salaries  are  needed,  and  in 
view  of  the  alarming  shortage  in  the  supply  of  teachers  and 
the  decreasing  attendance  upon  the  normal  schools,  such  appro- 
priations should  certainly  be  made  at  once  if  a  situation  worse 
than  that  which  exists  to-day  is  to  be  avoided.  But  higher  sal- 
aries alone  will  not  solve  the  problem.  What  is  needed  at  basis 
is  a  different  conception  of  the  teacher's  work,  and  what  is 
needed  first  of  all  is  an  adequate  appreciation  of  the  importance 
of  a  thoroughgoing  preparation  for  its  responsibilities. 

It  cannot  be  a  source  of  pride  to  our  people  that  the  United 
States  gives  less  attention  to  the  training  of  teachers  than  does 
any  other  great  nation.  It  cannot  be  a  matter  of  pride  to  our 
people  that,  of  all  our  professional  institutions,  those  who  have 
been  intrusted  with  the  preparation  of  teachers  for  the  public 
schools  are  the  most  penuriously  supported  and  the  least  attrac- 
tive to  ambitious  youth. 

Nor  can  these  normal  schools  with  their  inadequate  support 
supply  more  than  a  fraction  of  the  teachers  annually  needed  for 
the  public  schools.  Their  total  output  each  year  is  scarcely 
enough  for  the  needs  of  the  urban  communities,  leaving  the 
rural  and  village  schools  almost  entirely  dependent  upon  un- 
trained recruits.  In  a  typical  state — a  state  that  is  perhaps  mid- 
way between  the  most  progressive  and  the  most  backward  edu- 
cationally— 80  per  cent,  of  the  rural-school  teachers  this  year 
are  boys  and  girls  fresh  from  the  eighth  grade  of  the  common 
schools — and  even  under  these  inadequate  standards  this  state 
reports  a  shortage  in  teachers,  so  keen  is  the  demand  for  their 
services  in  other  occupations. 

For  the  national  government  generously  to  cooperate  with  the 
states,  first  in  meeting  the  emergency  which  is  drawing  so  many 


368  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

teachers  away  from  the  schools,  and  then  in  supporting  institu- 
tions and  agencies  for  the  preparation  of  competent  teachers, 
would  be  to  rake  at  once  the  status  of  the  teaching  profession 
and  thereby  enhance  the  efficiency  of  the  schools  throughout  the 
land.  Without  encroaching  upon  the  autonomy  of  the  several 
states,  such  cooperation  would  recognize  in  a  most  effective  way 
the  dependence  of  the  nation's  welfare  upon  the  public  schools 
and  the  significance  of  the  teacher's  service  to  the  nation's  life. 

The  country  child  to-day  is  at  a  distinct  disadvantage  educa- 
tionally as  compared  with  the  city  child.  Not  only  are  his 
teachers  immature,  transient,  and  untrained,  but  his  term  of 
schooling  in  the  average  of  cases  is  from  one  to  three  months 
shorter  each  year,  and  from  two  to  three  years  shorter  in  its 
entirety.  Attendance  laws  are  often  laxly  enforced  or  not  en- 
forced at  all.  The  expert  supervision,  which  could  do  something 
to  offset  the  immaturity  and  lack  of  training  upon  the  part  of 
the  teachers,  is  practically  non-existent.  The  course  of  study  is 
ill-adjusted  to  the  needs  of  rural  life. 

For  fifty  years  and  more  the  difficulties  of  the  rural  school 
situation  have  constituted  the  most  serious  and  perplexing  prob- 
lem of  American  education.  During  all  of  these  years  courageous 
efforts  have  been  made  throughout  the  country  to  find  a  solution 
of  this  problem.  While  these  efforts  have  enlisted  the  service  of 
hundreds  of  competent  and  devoted  leaders,  they  cannot  be 
said  as  yet  to  have  done  more  than  touch  the  surface.  When 
one  remembers  that  one-half  of  the  nation's  children  are  en- 
rolled in  the  rural  and  village  schools  it  is  not  difficult  to  under- 
stand why  the  largest  advances  have  been  at  best  only  local  and 
sporadic.  The  problem  is  of  too  vast  a  magnitude  to  be  af- 
fected fundamentally  by  anything  short  of  a  great  national 
movement.  The  time  for  that  movement  has  clearly  come. 

At  basis  the  difficulty  is  economic  and  social  rather  than  edu- 
cational. If  the  country  child  is  to  have  opportunities  for 
schooling  equivalent  to  those  provided  for  the  city  child,  pro- 
portionately more  money  must  be  spent  on  the  country  schools 
than  on  the  city  schools.  The  one-room,  ungraded  schools  are 
small  schools,  and  the  ratio  of  teachers  to  pupils  is  necessarily 
high.  The  consolidation  of  the  one-room  schools  will  reduce  this 
ratio  and  make  for  economy;  but  consolidation  is  impossible  in 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  369 

some  districts,  and  even  where  it  is  practicable,  the  consolidated 
school,  pupil  for  pupil,  will  always  be  more  expensive  to  oper- 
ate than  the  city  school.  Not  only  must  the  cost  of  transporta- 
tion be  met,  but  expert  teachers  for  these  schools  must  be  paid 
higher  salaries  than  are  demanded  by  teachers  of  the  same  ability 
and  training  in  the  city  schools.  Indeed,  in  the  few  states 
where  a  consistent  effort  has  been  made  to  furnish  the  country 
child  with  teachers  as  well  qualified  as  those  in  the  city  schools, 
it  has  been  found  necessary  to  increase  the  rural  teachers'  sal- 
aries from  10  to  20  per  cent,  above  the  city  level. 

As  long  as  schools  are  supported  entirely  or  almost  entirely 
by  local  taxation,  then,  it  is  clear  that  the  country  child  cannot 
have  the  educational  advantages  of  the  city  child.  The  per 
capita  wealth  of  the  rural  districts,  taking  the  country  as  a 
whole,  is  very  far  below  the  per  capita  wealth  of  the  urban  dis- 
tricts. School  funds  raised  by  general  state  taxation  and  dis- 
tributed to  the  local  communities  in  proportion  to  their  educa- 
tional needs  have  done  something  to  reduce  these  inequalities, 
but  except  in  a  very  few  cases  the  state  funds  are  so  meager 
that  their  influence  is  almost  negligible. 

It  is  again  the  narrow  neighborhood  conception  of  educational 
responsibility  that  has  stood  squarely  in  the  way  of  progress. 
In  general,  each  local  community  has  been  educationally  self- 
sufficient.  The  American  people  have  accepted  the  principle 
that  it  is  just  and  equitable  to  tax  individuals  in  proportion  to 
their  wealth  for  the  education  of  all  the  children  of  the  com- 
munity. They  have  not  as  yet  followed  the  course  of  reasoning 
to  its  logical  conclusion.  They  have  n->  ;  thoroughly  accepted 
the  equally  sound  principle  that  it  is  just  and  equitable  to  tax 
communities  in  proportion  to  their  wealth  for  the  education  of 
all  the  children  of  the  state. 

Combined  with  the  neighborhood  conception  of  educational  re- 
sponsibility as  a  handicap  to  progress  is  a  tendency  still  to  think 
of  the  public  school  as  an  essentially  philanthropic  enterprise. 
In  the  arguments  for  increased  funds  for  school  support,  the 
value  of  education  to  the  individual  and  the  disadvantage  under 
which  the  individual  suffers  when  he  is  denied  educational 
privileges  have  had  a  preponderant  place.  '  The  claims  of  the 
state  and  of  the  nation  for  an  enlightened  citizenship  have  been 


370  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

recognized,  it  is  true,  but  largely  in  a  perfunctory  way.  At 
basis  the  appeal  has  been  to  philanthropy  and  has  laid  its  chief 
emphasis  upon  the  injustice  of  denying  to  the  children  of  the 
poor  the  advantages  that  the  children  of  the  rich  enjoy. 

It  is  in  no  sense  derogatory  to  our  people  that  they  have  sup- 
ported and  extended  educational  opportunities  primarily  from 
this  essentially  philanthropic  motive ;  but  the  exclusive  appeal 
to  this  motive  has  been  unfortunate.  It  has  intensified  the  lo- 
calism of  education.  It  has  led  the  richer  communities  to  self- 
satisfaction  with  their  own  educational  efforts  on  the  ground  that 
they  were  doing  their  best  for  all  the  children  within  their 
own  borders.  If  children  beyond  their  borders  were  less  well 
circumstanced  the  richer  communities  might  lament  the  fact, 
but  they  could  hardly  be  expected  to  divide  their  wealth  and 
their  advantages  with  their  less  fortunate  neighbors.  Thus  the 
fact  that  American  communities  are  interdependent  educationally 
as  well  as  commercially  and  industrially  has  been  obscured. 
That  the  wealth  and  prosperity  of  a  great  city  are  directly  re- 
lated to  the  prosperity  of  its  tributary  area  is  clear  to  all.  That 
the  prosperity  of  this  tributary  area  depends  upon  the  intelli- 
gence of  its  inhabitants,  that  the  schools  of  this  area  should  be 
matters  of  concern  to  those  who  have  the  city's  prosperity  at 
heart,  and  that  the  city  has  an  obligation  to  the  outlying  dis- 
tricts from  which  its  wealth  has  been  derived,  these  are  truths 
not  so  readily  grasped. 

It  has  indeed  taken  the  experiences  of  the  past  year  to  drive 
home  this  basic  fact  of  educational  interdependence.  It  has 
taken  the  crisis  of  the  great  war  to  prove  convincingly  that 
there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  an  American  community  that 
lives  to  itself  alone,  whether  in  industry,  in  politics,  or  in  edu- 
cation. With  seven  hundred  thousand  illiterate  young  men  sub- 
ject to  the  draft,  the  educational  backwardness  of  any  single 
district  or  area  becomes  at  once  a  matter  of  national  concern. 
Modern  warfare  is  a  conflict  in  which  mental  efficiency  and 
physical  efficiency  combine  to  play  the  leading  roles,  and  even 
the  kind  o~  physical  efficiency  which  modern  warfare  demands 
is  the  intelligent  kind — the  counterpart  of  adequate  knowledge 
and  clear  thinking. 

The  war  has  revealed  all  this  with  startling  clearness.     It  is 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  371 

for  us  now  to  generalize  the  lesson.  If  the  safety  of  democracy 
in  a  time  of  great  crisis  is  so  clearly  dependent  upon  a  high  level 
of  enlightened  intelligence,  we  may  be  sure  that  the  passing  of 
the  crisis  will  not  change  this  fundamental  condition. 

The  rural  and  village  schools  are  by  far  the  weakest  links  in 
the  educational  chain.  There  is  no  way  in  which  these  links  can 
be  strengthened  save  through  expenditures  vastly  greater  than 
the  local  communities  can  supply.  General  state  taxation  has 
already  proved  itself  inadequate  to  a  solution  of  the  problem  on 
a  national  scale.  The  welfare  of  the  nation  itself  is  more  inti- 
mately bound  up  with  the  intelligence  of  that  majority  of  its 
children  now  enrolled  in  the  rural  and  village  schools  than 
with  any  other  single  factor.  Federal  cooperation  in  the  sup- 
port and  development  of  rural  education  is  clearly  and  un- 
equivocally the  only  solution  of  the  problem. 


THE  CONSOLIDATED  SCHOOL  AS  A  COMMUNITY 
CENTER 1 

JOHN   H.    COOK 

THE  consolidated  school  ministers  to  the  educational  needs  of 
a  larger  community  than  is  served  by  the  one-room  school.  A 
minimum  number  of  interested  people  are  essential  to  an  abid- 
ing interest  in  a  social  community  center.  The  number  of 
patrons  in  the  sub-district  school  is  below  the  minimum,  while 
the  consolidated  school  may  have  sufficient  numbers  to  main- 
tain this  interest.  Many  forms  of  community  recreation  and 
activity  are  made  possible  by  the  support  of  this  larger  num- 
ber. Among  such  activities  may  be  mentioned  lecture  courses, 
interscholastic  contests,  both  athletic  and  intellectual,  home- 
talent  plays,  farmers'  institutes  and  extension  schools,  and  other 
entertainments  of  various  sorts. 

Talented  leadership  is  indispensable  to  success  in  making  an 
institution  a  social  or  community  center.  There  is  a  dearth  of 
leadership  in  the  one-room  school  district  unit,  owing  to  small 
numbers  and  the  lack  of  interest  of  the  natural  leaders  of  the 

i  Adapted  from  Publications  American  Sociological  Society,  XI :  97-105, 
1916. 


372  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

community  in  the  one-room  school.  For  the  class  from  which 
leaders  are  recruited  is  composed  partly  of  those  parents  who 
are  divided  in  school  interests  on  account  of  children  attending 
foreign  high  schools  and  partly  of  those  who  hold  in  entire  dis- 
dain the  inferior  schools  of  the  community.  The  functions  held 
in  the  one-room  school  are  not  likely  even  to  secure  the  patron- 
izing presence  of  those  whose  standing  and  attainments  fit  them 
for  leadership.  Without  the  hearty  cooperation  of  the  nat- 
ural leaders  of  a  community  no  institution  can  be  a  successful 
social  center. 

The  consolidated  or  centralized  school  offers  bountiful  op- 
portunity for  the  extension  of  mutual  acquaintance  among  the 
residents  of  a  rural  community.  Children  from  distant  por- 
tions of  the  township  form  friendships  which  tend  to  create 
ties  of  interest  in  the  parents.  One  resident  of  a  centralized 
district  describes  the  results  of  centralization  in  extending  ac- 
quaintance thus :  .  ' '  Before  the  schools  were  centralized  my  son 
seemed  to  know  no  one  when  we  rode  about  the  township.  Now 
as  we  ride  about,  a  boy  or  girl  will  yell,  'Hello,  Sammy/  or 
wave  greetings  from  a  distance.  When  I  inquire,  'Who  is 
this  ? '  he  often  gives  names  entirely  unfamiliar  to  me.  Through 
my  son  I  have  become  acquainted  with  many  excellent  people 
whom,  otherwise,  I  would  have  never  known. ' '  This  is  a  typical 
experience. 

Another  beneficent  result,  permanent  in  effect,  will  be  the 
formation  of  lasting  friendships  among  the  citizens  of  the  fu- 
ture. This  will  more  than  neutralize  the  disintegrating  forces 
resulting  from  changed  industrial  conditions.  Not  only  does 
the  centralized  school  offer  a  wider  acquaintanceship  than  is 
offered  by  the  one-room  school,  but  in  addition  a  longer  period 
of  acquaintance  is  offered  by  the  consolidated  schools.  The  high 
school  will  continue  the  associations  of  childhood  through  the 
adolescent  period.  These  constructive  features  of  the  consoli- 
dated school  do  not  exist  in  the  one-room  school  or  in  any  other 
rural  institution  except  the  consolidated  school. 

Another  service  offered  by  the  consolidated  school  is  of  far- 
reaching  effect  in  the  social  life  of  rural  communities.  Rural 
folks  have  long  been  characterized  by  bashf ulness  and  the  lack  of 
capacity  for  social  enjoyment.  This  is  caused  largely  by  lack  of 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  373 

opportunity  to  play  in  childhood.  Schools  should  develop  the 
social  power  of  pupils  as  well  as  their  mental  power.  Social 
power,  like  other  powers,  can  be  developed  only  by  its  growth 
through  exercise  in  a  favorable  environment.  In  the  one-room 
school,  where  a  child  meets  with  only  one  or  two  of  his  own  age 
and  where  wholesome  play  and  social  enjoyment  are  lacking, 
there  can  be  no  development  of  the  social  power.  The  habits 
thus  formed  are  difficult  to  overcome  in  after-life ;  for  the  social 
powers  of  the  pupils  in  such  an  environment  are  stunted.  The 
consolidated  school  offers  a  wider  acquaintance  and  a  higher 
standard  of  social  behavior.  School  activities  stimulated  by  a 
commendable  school  spirit  will  establish  the  habit  of  cooperation. 
Thus,  the  increased  social  opportunities  offered  by  the  consoli- 
dated school  will  lay  the  foundations  of  a  higher  type  of  social 
activities  in  the  rural  communities  of  the  future,  so  that  the  cul- 
tured classes  of  the  community  will  be  glad  to  cooperate  in  the 
social  uplift  of  all. 

In  the  consolidated  or  centralized  school  there  is  also  a  better 
opportunity  to  secure  constructive  leadership  from  among  the 
teachers.  The  consolidated  school  with  its  high  school  depart- 
ment demands  better  trained  and  better  prepared  teachers  than 
does  the  typical  one-room  school  which  is  content  with  a  teacher 
who  has  a  modicum  of  scholarship,  training,  and  initiative.  The 
college  graduate  who  teaches  in  the  high  school  and  the  normal 
graduate  who  teaches  in  the  grades  offer  better  material  for 
leadership  by  reason  of  their  scholarship,  their  special  training, 
and  their  social  experience. 

In  the  corps  of  teachers  of  the  consolidated  school,  there  is 
usually  one  who  has  specialized  in  music  and  who  is  capable  of 
teaching  and  drilling  children,  so  that  appropriate  music,  an 
essential  of  all  community  gatherings,  may  be  furnished  by  the 
children  of  the  parents  of  the  community.  Under  the  direction 
of  the  domestic  science  teacher  the  pupils  of  the  school  may  dem- 
onstrate the  quality  of  their  work  in  the  culinary  art  to  the 
satisfaction  and  pride  of  parents  and  friends.  The  one-room 
school  system  is  defective  in  providing  capable  leadership  from 
among  its  teachers.  The  consolidated  school  need  not  be  handi- 
capped by  this  defect,  as  it  has  opportunity  to  provide  fit  ma- 
terial from  among  its  corps  of  high-class  teachers. 


374  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Suitable  buildings  and  adequate  equipment  are  necessary  for 
modern  community  centers.  A  well-lighted  and  well-arranged 
auditorium,  a  piano,  a  library  and  reading-room,  a  gymnasium 
for  winter  functions,  and  financial  backing  sufficient  for  the 
maintenance  of  these  essentials  are  needed  in  a  modern  com- 
munity center.  A  modern  consolidated  school  usually  provides 
the  requisites  mentioned  above.  If  not,  because  of  the  union  of 
financial  resources  that  obtains  in  a  consolidated  school  dis- 
trict, these  things  may  usually  be  provided  without  financial 
strain.  Community  meetings  held  under  favorable  conditions 
will  secure  a  larger  attendance  and  greater  enjoyment  than  when 
held  in  buildings  poorly  arranged,  badly  lighted,  and  scantily 
equipped.  AVhen  meetings  with  helpful,  interesting,  and  ele- 
vating programs  are  held  in  a  properly  equipped  building  under 
competent  management  in  connection  with  an  institution  in 
which  all  are  interested,  there  can  be  no  serious  doubt  as  to  the 
successful  future  of  such  efforts. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Betts,  G.  H.,  and  Hall,  Otis  E.  Better  Rural  Schools.  Bobbs-Merrill, 
Indianapolis,  1914. 

Betts,  G.  H.     New  Ideals  in  Rural  Schools.     Houghton,  Boston,  1913. 

Brittain,  H.  L.  Report  of  the  Ohio  State  School  Survey  Commission. 
Published  by  State  of  Ohio,  Columbus,  1914. 

Brown,  H.  A.  The  Readjustment  of  a  Rural  High  School  to  the  Needs 
of  the  Community.  Bui.  20,  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education,  1912. 

Burnham,  Ernest.  Rural  School  Efficiency  in  Kalamazoo  County, 
Mich.  Bui.  4,  1909,  published  by  State  Supt.  of  Public  Instruc- 
tion, Lansing-,  Mich. 

Two  Types  of  Rural  Schools  with  Some  Facts  Showing  Economic 
and  Social  Conditions.  Teachers  College,  Columbia  Univ.,  N.  Y., 
1912. 

Rural  Teacher  Preparation  in  State  Normal  Schools.  U.  S.  Bur.  of 
Ed.  Bui.,  1918,  No.  27.  Government  Printing  Office,  Washington. 

Carney,  Mabel.  Country  Life  and  the  Country  School.  Row,  Chi- 
cago, 1912. 

Gary,  C.  P.  Rural  School  Board  Conventions.  National  Education 
Assn.  Proceedings,  1907,  pp.  288-290. 

Cook,  Katherine  M.,  and  Monahan,  A.  C.  Rural  School  Supervision, 
U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education,  Bui.  48,  1916. 

Cotton,  F.  A.,  and  O'Shea,  M.  V.,  and  Larson,  W.  E.  Consolidation 
of  School  Districts.  Bui.  17,  Supt.  of  Public  Instruction,  Mad- 
ison, Wis.,  1912. 

Crocheron,  B.  H.,  and  others.  The  Rural  School  as  a  Community  Cen- 
ter. The  Tenth  Yearbook  of  National  Society  for  the  Study  of 
Education,  Part  II,  Univ.  of  Chicago  Press,  Chicago,  1911. 


THE  COUNTRY  SCHOOL  375 

Crosby,  Dick  J.,  and  Crocheron,  B.  H.  Community  Work  in  the 
Rural  lliuh  School,  U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture,  Yearbook, 
1910,  pp.  177-88. 

Cubberley,   E.   P.     The   Improvement   of   Rural    Schools.     Houghton, 

Boston,  1912. 

Rural  Life  and  Education.     Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  Boston,  1914. 
State  and   County   Educational  Reorganization.     Macmillau,  N.   Y., 
1915. 

Cubberley,  E.  P.,  and  Elliott,  E.  C.  State  and  County  School  Admin- 
istration. Vol.  II,  Source  Book,  Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1915. 

Cutler,  H.  M.,  and  Stone,  Julia  M.  The  Rural  School,  its  Methods  and 
Management.  Silver,  N.  Y.,  1913. 

Davenport,  E.     Education  for  Efficiency.     Heath,  N.  Y.,  1909. 

Davis,  E.  E.  A  Study  of  Rural  Schools  in  Travis  County,  Texas. 
Univ.  of  Texas,  Bui.  07,  Austin,  1910. 

Dewey,  Evelyn.     New  Schools  for  Old.     Dutton,  N.  Y.,  1919. 

Dewey,  John.     Democracy  and  Education.     Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1916. 

Dresslar,  F.  B.  Rural  Schoolhouses  and  Grounds.  U.  S.  Bureau  of 
Education,  Bui.  12,  1914. 

Eggleston,  J.  D.,  and  Bruere,  R.  W.  The  Work  of  the  Rural  School. 
Harper,  N.  Y.,  1913. 

Field,  Jessie.     The  Corn  Lady.     Flanagan,  Chicago,  1911. 

Foght,  H.  W.     The  American  Rural  School.     Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1910. 
Rural  Denmark  and  its  Schools.     Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1915. 
The  Rural  Teacher  and  His  Work  in   Community  Leadership.     In 
School   Administration,  and  in   Mastery  of  the   School   Subjects. 
Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1917. 

The  Rural  School  System  of  Minnesota.     U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education, 
Bui.  20,  1915. 

Frost,  N.  A  Statistical  Study  of  the  Public  Schools  of  the  Southern 
Appalachian  Mountains.  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education,  Bui.  11, 
1915. 

Hamilton,  John.  The  Township  High  School.  Pennsylvania  Dept.  of 
Agriculture,  Bui.  21,  Harrisburg,  1897. 

Hart,  Joseph  K.  Educational  Resources  of  Village  and  Rural  Com- 
munities. Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1913. 

Hart,  W.  R.  The  Work  of  the  Massachusetts  Agricultural  College  for 
the  Schools  of  Massachusetts.  Mass.  Agric.  College  Extension 
Service,  Facts  for  Farmers,  Vol.  3,  No.  6,  Amherst,  1913. 

Hockenberry,  John  C.  The  Rural  School  in  the  United  States.  Pub- 
lished by  author,  Westfield,  Mass.,  1908. 

Johnson,  A.  A.  County  Schools  of  Agriculture  and  Domestic  Econ- 
omy in  Wisconsin.  Bui.  242,  Office  of  Experimental  Stations,  U. 
S.  D.  A.,  1911. 

Kennedy,  Joseph.  Rural  Life  and  the  Rural  School.  American,  N. 
Y./1915. 

Kern,  0.  J.     Among  Country  Schools.     Ginn,  Boston,  1906. 

Larson,  W.  E.,  and  others.  Social  and  Civic  Work  in  Country  Com- 
munities. Bui.  18,  State  Supt.  of  Public  Instruction,  Madison, 
Wis.,  1913. 

Larson,  W.  E.  The  Wisconsin  County  Training  Schools  for  Teachers 
in  Rural  Schools.  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education,  Bui.  17,  1916. 


376  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Lewis,  Howard  P.  The  Rural  School  and  the  Community.  Badger, 
Boston,  1918. 

Miller,  James  C.  Rural  Schools  in  Canada.  Teachers  College,  Colum- 
bia Univ.,  N.  Y.,  1913. 

Monahan,  A.  C.     Consolidation  of  the  Rural  Schools.     Bui.  604,  U.  S. 

Bureau  of  Education,  1915. 

The  Status  of  Rural  Education  in  the  United  States.     U.  S.  Bureau 
of  Education,  Bui.  8,  1913. 

Monahan,  A.  C.,  and  Wright,  R.  H.  Training  Courses  for  Rural 
Teachers.  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education,  2,  1913. 

Murphy,  C.  R.  Country  and  Town  Students  in  High  Schools.  (A 
comparative  study  of  the  work  done  in  high  schools  by  pupils  who 
did  their  first  eight  years'  work  in  rural  schools  and  those  who 
did  it  in  town  schools. )  Amer.  School  Board  Journal,  52 :  25,  26, 
February,  1916. 

Pickard,  A.  E.  Rural  Education  a  Complete  Course  of  Study  for 
Modern  Rural  Schools.  Webb,  St.  Paul,  1915. 

Preliminary  Report  of  the  Committee  of  Fifteen  Appointed  by  the 
State  Superintendent  of  Schools  to  Investigate  Educational  Needs 
and  Conditions  in  Wisconsin.  State  Supt.  of  Public  Instruction, 
Madison,  Wis.,  1912. 

Report  of  the  Committee  on  Industrial  Education  in  Schools  for  Rural 
Communities.  National  Education  Assn.,  Winona,  Minn.,  1905. 

Reynolds,  Annie.  The  Training  of  Teachers  for  the  Country  Schools 
of  Wisconsin.  State  Supt.  of  Public  Instruction  of  Wisconsin, 
Madison,  1917. 

Ryan,  Bridget  A.  A  Redirected  Rural  School.  Mass.  Agric.  College 
Extension  Service,  Bui.  6,  Amherst,  1916. 

Seerley,  Homer  H.     The  Country  School.     Scribner,  N.  Y.,  1913. 

Sims,  J.  F.,  and  Phelan,  John.  The  Normal  Schools  and  Rural  Edu- 
cation. Normal  Schools  of  Wisconsin  Bui.,  Board  of  Regents  of 
Normal  Schools,  Madison,  1912. 

Stern,  Rence  B.     Neighborhood  Entertainments.     Sturgis,  N.  Y.,  1910. 

The  Negro  Rural  School  and  Its  Relation  to  the  Community.  Pam- 
phlet issued  by  Extension  Dept.,  Tuskegee  Normal  and  Industrial 
Institute,  Tuskegee,  Ala.,  1915. 

Ward,  Edward  J.     The  Social  Center.     Appleton,  N.  Y.,  1913. 

Warren,  Burton,  (edited  by  Clifton  Johnson),  The  District  School  as 
It  Was.  Lee,  Boston,  1897. 

Waugh,  F.  A.  Country  School  Grounds.  Mass.  Agric.  College  Ex- 
tension Service,  Amherst,  1914. 

White,  E.  V.,  and  Davis,  E.  E.  A  Study  of  Rural  Schools  in  Texas. 
Univ.  of  Texas,  Bui.  364k,  Austin,  1914. 

Williams,  J.  H.  Reorganizing  a  County  System  of  Rural  Schools.  U. 
S.  Bureau  of  Education,  Bui.  16,  1916. 

Wilkinson,  William  Albert.  Rural  School  Management.  Silver,  N. 
Y.,  1917. 

Wray,  Angelina  W.  Jean  Mitchell's  School.  Public-School  Publish- 
ing Co.,  Bloomington,  111.,  1915. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES 
EDUCATION  THROUGH  FARM  DEMONSTRATION  l 

BRADFORD    KNAPP 

IN  1903-04  Congress  made  an  appropriation  authorizing  work 
to  counteract  the  ravages  of  the  Mexican  cotton  boll  weevil  in 
Texas  and  other  cotton  states.  This  insect  pest  was  laying  waste 
the  cotton  fields  of  the  Southwest,  leaving  abandoned  farms  and 
business  failures  in  its  wake.  A  small  portion  of  the  funds  so 
appropriated  was  devoted  to  a  work  conducted  by  the  late  Dr. 
Seaman  A.  Knapp  to  enable  him  to  try  out  his  method  of  teach- 
ing by  conducting  a  large  number  of  demonstrations  on  farms 
as  described  above.  Dr.  Knapp  was  then  seventy  years  of  age. 
He  had  been  a  stock  farmer  in  Iowa  in  the  '70  's,  and  afterwards 
Professor  of  Agriculture  and  President  of  the  Iowa  Agricultural 
College.  lie  had  come  to  the  South  in  1885  and  had  devoted 
a  great  deal  of  his  time  to  the  development  of  the  rice  industry 
in  Louisiana.  In  that  work  and  in  some  of  his  work  in  Iowa  he 
had  used  simple,  direct  methods  of  reaching  farmers  through 
practical  field  examples  and,  out  of  that  experience,  had  sug- 
gested that  he  be  permitted  to  try  his  plan  of  teaching  farmers 
through  demonstrations  conducted  on  their  own  farms. 

The  work  was  actually  begun  in  January,  1904.  The  main 
features  consisted  of  personal  visits  of  the  department's  repre- 
sentatives to  a  large  number  of  farms  scattered  over  the  coun- 
try then  seriously  affected.  Demonstrations  were  carried  on  by 
these  farmers  under  the  careful  instruction  of  these  representa- 
tives. At  first  the  work  was  devoted  mainly  to  improving  the 
cultural  methods  of  raising  cotton  in  order  to  minimize  the 
damage  from  the  weevil.  However,  it  was  soon  seen  that  the 

i  Adapted  from  Annals  of  tUe  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social 
Science,  Vol.  07:  224-240,  191(5. 

377 


378  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

difficulty  could  be  met  only  by  a  general  campaign  of  the  same 
character  for  the  purpose  of  bringing  about  a  diversification  of 
crops  and  better  agricultural  practices.  The  purpose  was  to 
bring  about  such  a  change  that  the  farmer  would  not  be  de- 
pendent entirely  upon  cotton  for  both  income  and  maintenance. 
Therefore,  demonstrations  in  corn  and  many  other  crops  were 
instituted  in  the  same  way. 

The  work  was  almost  an  immediate  success.  Thousands  of  ex- 
amples or  "demonstrations"  were  created  by  farmers  through 
the  instructions  of  the  department's  agents  under  Dr.  Knapp's 
leadership.  Meetings  were  held  at  the  demonstrations  and  expe- 
riences compared  at  the  end  of  the  season.  During  the  first  year 
or  two  the  work  covered  a  great  deal  of  territory.  The  demon- 
strations were  scattered  along  railroads  and  main  highways 
where  they  could  be  easily  reached  and  seen.  One  agent  was 
compelled  to  cover  considerable  territory.  However,  the  effect 
was  to  restore  confidence,  and  give  the  people  hope  and  some- 
thing to  live  on  while  they  readjusted  their  agriculture  to  meet 
the  new  conditions.  Gradually  the  farmers  began  to  understand 
that  they  could  raise  cotton  in  spite  of  the  weevil,  and  the  full 
restoration  of  prosperity  was  only  a  matter  of  time  and  the  ex- 
tension of  the  new  type  of  education. 

The  General  Education  Board  of  New  York  was,  at  that  time, 
engaged  in  an  earnest  effort  to  assist  southern  education,  not 
only  in  colleges,  but  in  secondary  schools,  and  even  the  primary 
rural  schools.  Their  attention  had  been  called  to  the  rural  prob- 
lem and  to  the  rural  schools  and  the  general  educational  needs 
of  the  country.  While  studying  the  situation  with  a  view  to 
greater  assistance,  they  came  in  contact  with  the  work  of  the 
department  under  Dr.  Knapp.  Their  representatives  visited 
Texas,  met  Dr.  Knapp  and  studied  his  work.  They  were  in- 
terested and  impressed  with  Dr.  Knapp's  statement  that  in 
meeting  an  emergency  he  had  found  an  opportunity  to  put  into 
practice  an  idea  he  had  worked  out  which  he  believed  to  be  of 
universal  application.  They,  therefore,  offered  to  furnish  the 
necessary  funds  to  permit  Dr.  Knapp  to  try  his  plan  in  sections 
of  the  South  far  removed  from  the  influence  of  the  boll  weevil, 
if  arrangements  could  be  made  with  the  department  of  agricul- 
ture for  the  trial.  As  a  result  of  their  effort  the  offer  was  ac- 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES        379 

cepted  and  Dr.  Knapp  was  furnished  with  funds  from  the  Gen- 
eral Education  Board  in  addition  to  the  funds  from  Congress. 
With  the  federal  funds  work  was  done  in  boll  weevil  territory 
and  the  territory  immediately  in  advance  of  the  weevil,  which 
was  gradually  migrating  from  year  to  year  north  and  east 
through  the  cotton  states.  With  the  funds  of  the  General  Edu- 
cation Board  work  of  the  same  kind  for  the  general  improve- 
ment of  agriculture  and  rural  economic  conditions  was  begun 
in  Mississippi  and  Virginia  in  1906,  and  was  extended  to  Ala- 
bama, South  Carolina,  Georgia,  and  North  Carolina  in  1907. 
The  direct  federal  funds  carried  the  work  in  Texas,  Louisiana, 
Oklahoma  and  Arkansas.  As  the  weevil  advanced  eastward, 
the  states  were  transferred  in  succession  from  the  General  Edu- 
cation Board  fund  to  the  federal  fund.  The  funds  from  both 
of  these  sources  increased  from  year  to  year  as  the  work  grew 
in  popularity.  In  1909  the  federal  funds  amounted  to  $102,000 
and  those  from  the  General  Education  Board  to  $76,500. 

In  1906  and  1907  such  was  the  demand  for  the  work  that  it 
was  impossible  to  reach  all  who  were  insisting  that  they  needed 
the  help.  When  advised  that  financial  assistance  was  the  limit- 
ing factor  in  spreading  the  work,  business  men  in  some  of  the 
counties  offered  to  assist  in  the  payment  of  the  salary  of  an 
agent  if  his  activities  could  be  restricted  to  their  county.  This 
was  done.  It  had  been  fully  realized  by  Dr.  Knapp  that  the 
work  would  be  improved  by  limiting  the  territory  served  by 
each  agent.  This  led  to  the  adoption  of  the  title  ''County 
Agent"  afterward  so  well  known  in  the  South. 

In  1909  the  state  of  Mississippi  took  the  lead  in  recognizing 
the  new  type  of  education  by  enacting  a  law  under  which  the 
county  might  pay  part  of  the  salary  of  the  agent.  In  the  years 
from  1909  to  1915,  every  southern  state  having  power  to  grant 
such  authority  to  the  county  passed  some  sort  of  law  permitting 
the  county  government  to  cooperate  with  the  United  States  De- 
partment of  Agriculture  in  this  work  and  to  pay  part  or  all 
the  salary  of  the  county  agent.  State  appropriations  were  made 
also  in  a  number  of  cases,  the  first  in  1911  in  Alabama. 

The  growth  of  the  work  was  phenomenal.  It  soon  became  the 
rule  rather  than  the  exception  for  the  county  to  furnish  at 
least  one-half  of  the  money  necessary  for  the  salary  and  expenses 


380  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  the  county  agent.  Of  late  years  the  financial  cooperation 
from  local  sources  has  practically  doubled  the  service  and  met 
the  appropriations  dollar  for  dollar  or  more.  During  the  early 
days  of  the  development  of  the  work  men  often  served  for  the 
love  of  the  service,  and  hence  the  rule  was  rather  low  salaries 
considering  the  service  rendered.  The  work  was  always  prac- 
tical and  direct.  As  it  grew  and  developed  and  the  men  became 
more  expert,  the  whole  system  gradually  took  form  and  certain 
well  recognized  methods  were  followed. 

What  does  a  county  agent  do  and  how  does  he  teach  by  dem- 
onstrations? The  county  agent  goes  to  the  farm  and  gives  his 
instruction  while  the  farmer  is  at  his  everyday  duties.  The  aim 
of  the  work  was  and  is  to  place  in  every  community  practical 
object  lessons  illustrating  the  best  and  most  profitable  method  of 
producing  the  standard  farm  crops,  or  of  animal  feeding,  etc., 
and  to  secure  such  active  participation  in  the  demonstration  on 
the  part  of  the  farmers  as  to  prove  that  they  can  make  a  much 
larger  average  annual  crop,  or  feed  or  produce  livestock  more 
economically,  and  secure  a  greater  return  for  their  toil.  Dr. 
Knapp  said  that  it  might  be  regarded  as  a  "system  of  adult  edu- 
cation given  to  the  farmer  upon  his  farm  by  object  lessons  in  the 
soil,  prepared  under  his  observation  and  generally  by  his  own 
hand." 

The  teaching  was  very  effective  because  at  first  it  was  simple 
in  character,  direct,  and  limited  to  a  few  fundamental  things, 
such  as  the  preparation  of  a  good  seed  bed,  deep  fall  plowing, 
the  selection  of  good  seed,  and  shallow  and  intensive  cultiva- 
tion. In  the  early  stages  of  the  work  Dr.  Knapp  framed  what 
he  called  the  "Ten  Commandments  of  Agriculture,"  as  follows: 

1.  Prepare  a  deep  and  thoroughly  pulverized  seed  bed,  well 
drained ;  break  in  the  fall  to  a  depth  of  8,  10  or  12  inches,  ac- 
cording to  the  soil ;  with  implements  that  will  not  bring  too  much 
of  the  sub-soil  to  the  surface;   (the  foregoing  depths  should  be 
reached  gradually). 

2.  Use  seed  of  the  best  variety,  intelligent^  selected  and  care- 
fully stored. 

3.  In  cultivated  crops,  give  rows  and  the  plants  in  the  rows,  a 
space  suited  to  the  plant,  the  soil  and  the  climate, 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES  381 

4.  Use  intensive  tillage  during  the  growing  period  of  the  crop. 

5.  Secure  a  high  content  of  humus  in  the  soil  by  the  use  of 
legumes,  barnyard  manure,   farm  refuse   and  commercial  fer- 
tilizers. 

6.  Carry  out  a  system  of  crop  rotation  with  a  winter  cover 
crop  on  southern  farms. 

7.  Accomplish  more  work  in  a  day  by  using  more  horse  power 
and  better  implements. 

8.  Increase  the  farm  stock  to  the  extent  of  utilizing  all  the 
waste  products  and  idle  lands  on  the  farm. 

9.  Produce  all  the  food  required  for  the  men  and  animals  on 
the  farm. 

10.  Keep  an  account  of  each  farm  product  in  order  to  know 
from  which  the  gain  or  loss  arises. 

These  became  very  widely  known  in  the  South  and  formed  the 
basis  for  much  of  the  work  done  by  the  agents. 

The  demonstrations  were  extended  from  crop  to  crop.  With 
the  fundamental  idea  that  it  was  necessary  to  readjust  the  agri- 
culture of  the  South  and  make  it  more  profitable  and  to  make 
the  country  life  better,  Dr.  Knapp  taught  the  great  lesson  of 
diversification  or  a  self-sustaining  agriculture.  The  preserva- 
tion of  the  fertility  of  the  soil  and  the  furnishing  of  the  living 
of  the  people  on  the  farm  from  its  products,  were  two  necessary 
changes  if  the  South  was  to  prosper.  With  these  things  taken 
care  of,  that  great  section  was  well  supplied  with  cash  crops 
which  it  could  produce  and  exchange  in  the  markets  of  the  world 
for  the  money  with  which  to  improve  her  life  and  her  indus- 
tries. The  trouble  was  that  the  South  was  producing  these 
splendid  crops  of  cotton,  tobacco,  rice  and  sugar  and  exchang- 
ing them  for  her  living. 

One  of  the  problems  was  to  reach  as  many  farmers  as  possible. 
The  county  agent  could  not  possibly  carry  on  a  demonstration  on 
every  farm  in  the  county.  Two  plans  proved  effective.  The 
first  was  to  rely  upon  the  fact  that  farmers,  like  other  people, 
would  imitate  what  they  saw  tried  with  success.  It  became  very 
evident  that  one  good  demonstration  in  a  neighborhood  reached 
more  people  than  the  farmer  who  carried  on  the  demonstration. 
A  varying  number  of  the  neighbors  copied  the  practices  and 


382  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

profited  by  the  lesson  because  it  was  simple,  and  close  by  where 
they  could  see  it.  But  some  effort  was  also  made  to  assist  this 
process.  Farmers  around  the  demonstration  were  notified  of  the 
agent 's  visit  and  invited  to  come  to  the  demonstration  farm  for  a 
conference.  These  informal  meetings  were  called  field  meetings 
or  field  schools.  Neighboring  farmers  who  were  sufficiently  in- 
terested agreed  to  carry  on  a  demonstration  on  their  own  farms 
and  to  obtain  their  instruction  from  meeting  the  agent  at  the 
demonstration  farms.  These  men  who  were  not  visited  were 
called  ' l  cooperators. "  Out  of  these  meetings  grew  neighbor- 
hood organizations  of  farmers  or  community  clubs  which  now 
form  an  important  part  of  the  work. 

About  1908  Dr.  Knapp  first  began  what  was  known  as  the 
Boys'  Corn  Club  Movement  in  the  South.  It  is  true  that  there 
had  been  corn  clubs  in  a  number  of  the  northern  states  and  in 
one  or  two  of  the  southern  states  prior  to  that  time.  However, 
Dr.  Knapp  should  receive  the  credit  for  systematizing  this  very 
important  and  excellent  piece  of  work.  He  established  it  on  an 
acre  contest  basis  and  arranged  for  the  giving  of  prizes,  not  on 
the  maximum  yield  alone,  but  upon  the  maximum  yield  at  mini- 
mum cost,  with  a  written  essay  describing  the  work  done  and  an 
exhibit  of  the  product.  The  objects  of  the  Boys'  Corn  Club 
Work  were: 

1.  To  afford  the  rural  teacher  a  simple  and  easy  method  of 
teaching  practical  agriculture  in  the  schools  in  the  way  it  must 
be  acquired  to  be  of  any  real  service;  namely,  by  actual  work 
upon  the  farm. 

2.  To  prove  that  there  is  more  in  the  soil  than  the  farmer 
has  ever  gotten  out  of  it.     To  inspire  boys  with  a  love  of  the 
land  by  showing  them  how  they  can  get  wealth  out  of  it  by 
tilling  it  jn  a  better  way,  and  thus  to  be  helpful  to  the  family 
and  the  neighborhood,  and 

3.  To  give  the  boys  a  definite,  worthy  purpose  and  to  stimulate 
a  friendly  rivalry  among  them. 

The  first  effort  in  this  direction  was  in  Mississippi  when  Mr. 
W.  H.  Smith,  then  County  Superintendent  of  Schools  for  Holmes 
County,  did  the  work  in  cooperation  with  the  demonstration 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES        383 

forces.  Results  of  this  work  were  extended  gradually  to  the 
other  states  until  the  Boys'  Corn  Club  Movement  as  a  part  of 
the  general  scheme  of  education  through  demonstration  became 
a  very  large  factor  in  southern  agricultural  work. 

The  Boys'  Club  Work  was  organized  mainly  through  the 
schools.  The  county  agent  was  recognized  as  the  agricultural 
authority  and  gave  the  boys  instruction.  The  school  teachers 
generally  acted  as  the  organizers  of  the  clubs.  The  county  super- 
intendent was  a  good  cooperator.  The  state  superintendent  often 
assisted  materially  with  the  work.  Prizes  were  contributed  by 
local  business  men ;  the  bankers  became  interested  and  often 
gave  considerable  money  for  prizes  for  these  contests.  The 
local  co-ntest  and  the  county  and  state  contest  soon  became  very 
important  and  interesting  events.  In  1909  four  state  prize  win- 
ners received  free  trips  to  Washington,  D.  C.  For  a  number  of 
years  these  annual  trips  attracted  much  attention.  This  plan 
was  abandoned  in  1914  for  the  better  system  of  scholarship 
prizes.  Since  then  the  chief  annual  prize  in  the  state  has  been 
a  scholarship  at  the  Agricultural  College.  Pig  Clubs,  Baby  Beef 
Clubs,  Clover  Clubs,  etc.,  are  but  a  natural  evolution  which 
came  with  the  years. 

In  1911  the  number  of  county  agents  had  reached  583,  the 
number  of  demonstrators  and  cooperators  had  reached  100,000, 
and  the  number  of  boys  approximately  51,000. 

In  1910  Dr.  S.  A.  Knapp  began  to  develop  a  part  of  the  work 
for  women  and  girls.  It  was  his  belief  that  he  had  thus  far 
planned  the  work  for  the  father  and  son.  He  desired  to  com- 
plete the  work  by  doing  something  for  the  mother  and  daugh- 
ter. 

In  October,  1910,  he  wrote: 

The  Demonstration  Work  has  proven  that  it  is  possible  to  reform,  by 
simple  means,  the  economic  life  and  the  personality  of  the  farmer  on 
the  farm.  The  Boys'  Corn  Clubs  have  likewise  shown  how  to  turn  the 
attention  of  the  boy  toward  the  farm.  There  remains  the  home  itself  and 
its  women  and  girls.  This  problem  can  not  be  approached  directly.  The 
reformer  who  tells  the  farmer  and  his  wife  that  their  entire  home  system 
is  wrong  will  meet  with  failure.  With  these  facts  in  view  I  have  gone  to 
work  among  the  girls  to  teach  one  simple  and  straight-forward  lesson 
which  will  open  their  eyes  to  the  possibilities  of  adding  to  the  family 
income  through  sin: pie  work  in  and  about  the  home. 


384  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Beginning  in  the  states  of  South  Carolina,  Virginia  and  Mis- 
sissippi, there  were  developed  that  year  a  number  of  Girls'  Can- 
ning Cubs.  This  work  increased  rapidly. 

In  the  broad  development  of  the  work  as  a  whole  the  county 
agents,  both  men  and  women,  naturally  divide  their  activities 
into  three  general  classes : 

First:  Their  actual  demonstrations  with  farmers,  their  wives, 
and  the  boys  and  girls. 

Second:  The  giving  out  of  general  information  through 
speeches,  meetings,  etc. 

Third:  Efforts  to  stimulate  organization. 

In  the  South  organization  work  has  proceeded  mainly  on  a 
community  basis.  Community  interest  and  activity  have  been 
often  stimulated  by  the  demonstrations,  and  the  collecting  of 
people  together  at  the  demonstrations  has  furnished  a  ready 
means  of  natural  organization  of  communities.  In  many  com- 
munities there  were  already  organizations  such  as  the  Farmers' 
Union.  These  are  assisted  by  the  county  agents.  As  a  rule  the 
community  organization  has  some  definite  object  in  view  such 
as  the  improvement  of  agricultural  practices,  standardization  of 
production,  maintenance  of  pure  varieties  of  seed  and  standard- 
izing the  production  of  various  kinds  of  livestock.  Very  often, 
also,  they  have  engaged:  in  the  cooperative  purchase  of  supplies, 
mainly  fertilizers,  and  in  some  cooperative  marketing. 

In  the  northern  states  there  has  grown  up  a  type  of  organiza- 
tion known  as  the  County  Farm  Bureau,  which  is  mainly  an  or- 
ganization of  individual  farmers  who  interest  themselves  in  se- 
curing a  county  agent  and  assisting  in  the  general  work  in  the 
county.  These  organizations  have  proved  quite  effective  in  han- 
dling a  large  amount  of  business  and  creating  greater  interest  in 
agriculture. 

In  many  counties  in  the  South  the  type  of  organization  for 
the  whole  county  consists  in  the  confederation  of  representatives 
from  the  community  organizations  to  form  a  county  association 
for  the  general  improvement  of  agriculture  in  the  whole  county. 
It  is  not  possible  in  this  short  article  to  discuss  the  merits  of  the 
two  types  of  organization.  Each  type  has  many  points  of  merit 
and  each  seems  to  be  meeting  the  present  needs  of  the  people. 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES  385 

The  ultimate  type  may  be  a  combination  of  the  good  features  of 
both  plans. 

Thus  in  brief  we  have  the  complete  work  involving  the  service 
of  an  educational  system  for  the  men,  women,  boys  and  girls  on 
the  farm.  It  should  be  fully  understood  that  the  county  agent, 
either  among  the  men  or  the  women,  is  not  left  to  his  own  fancy 
or  whim  in  the  work.  First  there  are  the  state  agents  or  leaders 
who  look  after  the  work  in  an  entire  state,  with  assistants,  called 
by  that  name,  or  district  agents  in  case  they  are  given  a  portion 
of  the  state. 

There  are  also*specialists  to  complete  the  work.  These  are  men 
who  have  been  trained  especially  along  some  particular  branch 
of  agriculture  and  therefore  have  studied  and  prepared  them- 
selves to  meet  special  problems  or  sets  of  problems.  These  men 
are  entomologists,  agronomists,  horticulturists,  dairymen,  pathol- 
ogists,  etc.  A  few  such  specialists  are  employed  to  assist  the 
county  agents  along  these  special  lines.  There  are  also  such 
men  as  market  experts  and  farm  management  experts  who  as- 
sist the  county  agents  in  their  various  special  problems.  All  of 
these  together,  under  a  general  director,  constitute  what  is 
usually  known  as  the  Extension  Work  or  the  Extension  Service 
of  the  state. 

Dr.  Seaman  A.  Knapp  died  in  the  spring  of  1911  at  the  ripe 
age  of  seventy-seven  years.  After  his  death  the  work  was  con- 
tinued without  interruption.  In  these  years  it  grew  as  before 
and  its  various  parts  were  perfected  as  the  men  engaged  in- 
creased in  knowledge  and  understanding  of  the  work  they  were 
doing.  In  1911  the  work  had  been  extended  to  all  of  the  south- 
ern states  with  the  exception  of  Kentucky,  West  Virginia  and 
Maryland.  In  these  states  it  was  begun  in  1913. 

As  early  as  the  fall  of  1911,  an  effort  was  made  in  South 
Carolina  to  bring  together  all  the  extension  work  in  the  state 
and  to  join  the  federal  and  the  state  forces  into  one  organiza- 
tion managed  under  a  cooperative  agreement.  The  cooperative 
agreement  was  actually  perfected  in  December,  1911,  and  put 
into  operation  in  January,  1912.  Under  this  plan  the  College 
of  Agriculture  of  the  State  and  the  Federal  Department  agreed 
on  a  joint  representative  to  administer  the  work  in  the  state  and 


386  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

agreed  on  the  details  and  method  under  which  he  was  to  carry 
the. work  along.  This  plan  proved  an  immediate  success  and 
was  copied  in  Texas  in  1912  and  in  Georgia  in  1913.  Florida 
fell  in  line  in  the  early  spring  of  1914. 

In  1911  some  experiments  in  reaching  farmers  directly  through 
a  resident  instructor  were  tried  in  the  northern  states  under  the 
direction  of  the  Office  of  Farm  Management  of  the  Federal  De- 
partment of  Agriculture.  In  the  early  part  of  the  year  1912 
the  same  office  was  authorized  to  begin  a  systematic  effort  to 
extend  this  practical  direct  work  among  farmers  into  the  south- 
ern states.  The  problems  to  be  met  were  different  and  it  re- 
quired time  and  experience  to  enable  the  workers  to  adapt  the 
fundamental  principles  involved  in  the  demonstration  work  to 
the  new  field.  North  Dakota  began  an  independent  demonstra- 
tion work  early  in  1912,  afterward  uniting  with  the  department's 
general  work  of  the  same  character.  In  addition  to  North  Da- 
kota, New  York  and  Indiana  were  among  the  first  to  develop  the 
work  in  the  northern  states.  In  all  the  northern  and  western 
work  the  well  trained  county  agent  was  the  necessary  part  of 
the  plan  as  in  the  South. 

Beginning  in  1862  with  the  Morrill  Act  for  the  endowment 
of  the  state  colleges  of  agriculture,  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States  had  passed  a  series  of  acts  to  assist  the  states  in  agricul- 
tural education  and  research.  The  Nelson  Act  increased  the 
funds  for  teaching  agriculture  in  the  colleges,  and  the  Hatch 
and  Adams  Acts  created  and  supported  the  state  experiment 
stations. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  say  just  when  the  colleges  had  first 
begun  to  think  about  some  act  to  assist  them  with  the  extension 
work  or  direct  work  with  farmers,  but  certainly  a  number  of 
years  before  the  passage  of  the  Smith-Lever  Act  the  Association 
of  American  Agricultural  Colleges  and  Experiment  Stations  had 
been  interested  and  active  in  that  direction.  Many  of  the  lead- 
ing agricultural  colleges  of  the  northern  states,  and  especially 
of  the  middle  western  states,  had  established  extension  depart- 
ments of  considerable  proportions.  Their  work  consisted  mainly 
of  the  sending  out  of  specialists,  the  conducting  of  institutes, 
movable  schools  of  agriculture  and  home  economics,  short  courses 
at  the  colleges,  and  boys'  and  girls'  club  work.  Some  plot  work 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES  387 

and  a  few  demonstration  farms  of  the  kind  first  referred  to  in 
the  early  part  of  this  article  were  also  a  part  of  the  work.  As 
already  stated,  the  Office  of  Farm  Management  of  the  United 
States  Department  of  Agriculture  began  actual  work  in  the 
North  in  1912.  This  work  of  putting  county  agents  into  north- 
ern counties  grew  rapidly  and  appropriations  were  increased  to 
meet  the  expense. 

It  is  not  the  purpose  here  to  trace  the  history  of  the  passage 
of  the  Smith-Lever  Act.  The  Act  was  finally  approved  by  the 
President  May  8,  1914.  It  provides  for  the  establishment  of  co- 
operative extension  work  in  agriculture  and  home  economics. 
Each  state  was  to  establish  a  division  for  such  work  at  its  land 
grant  college,  that  is,  the  college  which  had  received  the  benefits 
of  the  Morrill,  the  Nelson,  the  Hatch  and  the  Adams  Acts. 

The  act  provides  that  the  work  shall  consist  of  instruction  and  practical 
demonstrations  in  agriculture  and  home  economics  to  persons  not  attending 
or  resident  in  said  colleges  in  the  several  communities,  and  imparting  to 
such  persons  information  on  said  subjects  through  field  demonstrations, 
publications  and  otherwise;  and  this  work  shall  be  carried  on  in  such 
manner  as  may  be  mutually  agreed  upon  by  the  Secretary  of  Agriculture 
and  the  State  Agricultural  College  or  colleges  receiving  the  benefits  of 
this  Act. 

The  appropriations  from  the  federal  treasury,  under  this  act, 
began  with  $480,000  for  the  year  ending  June  30,  1915,  which 
was  divided  equally,  $10,000  to  each  of  the  forty-eight  states. 
For  the  next  year  an  additional  appropriation  of  $600,000  was 
made  and  then  the  amount  increases  by  $500,000  per  annum 
until  the  amount  reaches  $4,100,000  in  addition  to  the  original 
$480,000,  or  a  total  of  $4,580.000.  As  to  all  the  additional  ap- 
propriation above  the  $480,000,  it  is  provided  that  it  shall  be 
divided  between  the  states  in  the  proportion  that  the  rural  pop- 
ulation of  each  state  bears  to  the  total  rural  population,  on  con- 
dition that  "no  payment  out  of  the  additional  appropriation 
herein  provided  shall  be  made  in  any  year  to  any  state  until 
an  equal  sum  has  been  appropriated  for  that  year  by  the  Legis- 
lature of  the  State,  or  provided  by  state,  county,  college,  local 
authority,  or  individual  contribution  from  within  the  state  for 
the  maintenance  of  the  cooperative  agricultural  extension  work 
provided  for  in  this  act."  This  means  that  -at  the  end  of  the 


388  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

year  1922  there  will  be  an  annual  appropriation  from  the  federal 
treasury  amounting  to  $4,580,000,  and  annual  contributions  from 
within  the  states  amounting  to  $4,100,000  for  the  support  of  the 
work,  or  a  grand  total  of  $8,680,000.  This  will  be  the  annual 
expenditure  in  this  new  and  important  system  of  agricultural 
education. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  the  law  itself  makes  this  a  co- 
operative work.  The  enormous  annual  economic  loss  in ,  the 
United  States  by  reason  of  soil  depletion,  insect  ravages,  dis- 
eases of  crops  and  animals,  improper  cultural  methods,  and  lack 
of  proper  marketing  systems  has  been  increasing  from  year  to 
year.  The  nation,  the  states,  the  colleges  and  many  public  and 
private  organizations  have  been  attempting  to  correct  these 
evils,  each  in  its  own  way  and  with  its  own  machinery  and  inde- 
pendent of  the  others.  The  resulting  effort  could  not  be  other- 
wise than  wasteful,  more  or  less  inefficient  and  often  misdi- 
rected. Wrong  principles  were  often  advocated  or  correct  ones 
improperly  presented.  Expensive  effort  was  duplicated  many 
times.  Rivalries  and  competition  were  more  common  than  har- 
mony and  cooperation.  The  result  of  it  all  was  doubt,  con- 
fusion and  lack  of  confidence  on  the  part  of  most  of  the  people 
in  agricultural  work.  The  new  act  provides  for  unity  and  co- 
operation. The  field  force  represents  both  the  United  States  De- 
partment of  Agriculture  and  the  state  colleges  of  agriculture. 

Shortly  after  the  passage  of  the  act  the  Secretary  of  Agricul- 
ture put  the  act  into  effect  by  making  an  agreement  with  each 
state  which  brings  all  the  work  into  harmony  and  unity  through 
the  one  state  organization  representing  both  the  state  and  the 
nation.  Within  the  department  he  established  the  States  Rela- 
tions Service,  the  two  divisions  of  which,  under  the  director, 
handle  the  relations  with  the  states  under  this  act  and  also  ad- 
minister all  extension  work  of  the  department  carried  out 
through  the  state  extension  divisions. 

Under  the  present  plans  there  will  eventually  be  a  county  agri- 
cultural agent  in  every  county  and  also  a  county  woman  agent, 
each  supported  in  their  work  by  a  trained  force  of  specialists  and 
a  competent  administrative  staff. 

So  we  have  the  new  system  of  instruction  with  its  full  force  of 
instructors  and  its  plans  being  worked  out.  A  great  public 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES        389 

• 

service  organization  has  been  created.  The  effect  of  this  great 
movement  can  not  be  estimated.  In  the  South,  where  it  has 
been  the  longest  in  operation,  the  improvement  in  agriculture  is 
most  noticeable.  Thousands  of  community  organizations  are 
drawing  together  for  better  rural  life,  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
demonstrations  are  conducted  each  year  and  the  actual  number 
of  persons  reached  already  mounts  into  the  millions.  The  wastes 
are  being  stopped,  the  bad  practices  remedied,  the  diseases  eradi- 
cated, tne  fertility  of  the  soil  conserved  and  built  up,  the  market- 
ing systems  improved,  and  country  life  is  beginning  to  take  on  an 
air  of  interest  and  attractiveness  which  will  hold  its  people  and 
draw  others  to  the  great  life  of  this  foundation  calling  of  the 
people. 

The  work  is  yet  in  its  infancy.  With  the  years  there  will  be 
improvements.  What  -are  now  regarded  as  experiments  will 
settle  into  accepted  practices.  Skill,  form,  system,  all  will  grow 
and  be  developed  as  they  have  with  the  teaching  in  the  schools. 
But  the  fundamental  principle  of  having  the  teacher  go  to  the 
one  to  be  taught  and  to  illustrate  the  lesson  by  a  demonstration 
conducted  by  the  one  receiving  the  lesson  will  remain  the  very 
foundation  of  the  new  educational  system.  It  has  already  tri- 
umphed where  the  word  of  mouth  instruction  failed.  The  dream 
of  the  founder  has  become  the  reality  recognized  and  established 
by  law. 


HOME  ECONOMICS  WORK  UNDER  THE  SMITH-LEVER 

ACT1 

THE  chief  objections  of  women  to  country  life  are  usually  (1) 
the  generally  small  returns  in  farming,  (2)  the  drudgery  of  farm 
work,  and  (3)  the  social  isolation.  More  money  for  home  con- 
veniences and  greater  efficiency  in  household  management  both 
have  in  view  the  lessening  of  the  drudgery  of  farm  work  and 
the  securing  of  certain  periods  of  leisure  to  farm  women  which 
may  be  used  in  productive,  social,  and  recreational  ways. 

i  Adapted  from  Journal  of  Home  Economics.  7:  357-358.  The  American 
Home  Economics  Assn..  Baltimore,  191.5.  Office  of  Information,  U.  S. 
Dept.  of  Agriculture. 


390  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Extension  work  designed  to  be  fundamentally  helpful  to  farm 
women  would  seem,  therefore,  to  include  within  its  scope  certain 
matters,  as  follows: 

1.  Plans  to  increase  the  net  income  of  the  farm.     Farm  women 
need  more  money  for  home  purposes.     The  purchase  of  home 
conveniences,  the  installation  of  water,  sewerage,  lighting,  and 
heating  systems,  kitchen  and  other  conveniences,  and  the  bring- 
ing of  literature  and  music  into  the  home  are,  in  the  majority 
of  country  homes,  dependent  upon  greater  net  profits  in  farm- 
ing.    Knowledge  of  these  conveniences  and  other  desirable  things 
is  good,  but  money  to  buy  these  desirable  things  is  a  vital  neces- 
sity if  country  life  is  to  be  made  as  acceptable  to  women  as  town 
life.     The  county  agent  is  giving  especial  attention  to  this  phase 
of  the  work. 

2.  Plans  to  teach  and  demonstrate  efficiency  in  farm  home 
management.     These  include  such  matters   as  wholesome   food 
properly  prepared  and  served  in  adequate  supply  and  variety 
throughout  the  year,  the  care  of  the  home  and  the  family  linen 
and  wardrobe,  the  care  and  management  of  children,  and  some- 
times the  handling  of  certain  farm  enterprises  like  poultry  and 
eggs,  milk  and  butter,  the  garden,  small  fruits,  etc.     Efficiency 
in  farm  home  management  contemplates  the  maximum  of  accom- 
plishment with  the  minimum  of  effort  to  the  end  that  the  farm 
family  may  find  satisfaction  and  contentment  in  the  home,  and 
that  the  time  of  the  farm  woman  may  be  conserved. 

3.  Plans  for  leisure  and  development.     The  farm  woman  needs 
time  for  reading,  self -development,  child  teaching,  social  life,  and 
recreation. 

In  the  development  of  Home  Economics  demonstration  work, 
there  needs  to  be  kept  in  mind  the  point  of  view  that  the  prob- 
lems of  country  women  must  chiefly  be  solved  by  country  women. 
The  county  agent  movement  in  some  sections  of  the  North  and 
West  started  out  primarily  as  a  city  man's  movement,  but  it  has 
succeeded  in  exact  proportion  as  the  farmers  of  the  country  have 
taken  hold  of  the  work  and  made  it  their  own. 

City  women  can  help  in  the  development  of  the  forthcoming 
demonstration  work  in  Home  Economics  for  country  women. 
One  of  the  ways  in  which  city  women  can  be  of  direct  help  in 
the  movement  is  through  greater  social  intercourse  with  farm 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES        391 

women,  through  direct  purchases  of  poultry,  eggs,  butter,  fresh 
and  canned  fruits  and  vegetables,  and  by  cooperating  with  them 
in  the  maintenance  of  rest  rooms,  nurseries,  etc.,  for  farm  women 
when  they  come  to  town.  But  what  farm  women  need  and  how 
to  meet  these  needs  are  matters  which  must  be  worked  out  chiefly 
by  farm  women  themselves.  The  criticism  sometimes  heard 
with  reference  to  much  of  our  Home  Economics  teaching  is 
that  such  teaching  is  done  primarily  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  town  woman.  The  country  woman's  problems  are  the  prob- 
lems of  the  country  and  must  be  approached  from  that  stand- 
point. 


BOYS'  AND  GIRLS'  CONTEST  CLUBS1 

L.    II.    BAILEY 

AMONG  the  many  enterprises  that  are  at  present  undertaken 
for  the  betterment  of  country  life  and  agriculture,  boys'  and 
girls'  clubs  are  holding  much  public  attention.  These  clubs 
are  in  the  nature  of  organized  contests,  with  emoluments,  prizes 
or  public  recognition  standing  as  rewards.  Contests  may  lie  in 
the  growing  of  prize  crops,  in  the  feeding  of  animals,  in  the 
making  of  gardens,  in  the  organizing  of  prize-winning  canning- 
clubs,  bread-clubs  and  others.  The  organization  of  these  clubs 
in  recent  years  has  undoubtedly  constituted  a  distinct  contribu- 
tion toward  the  stimulation  of  interest  in  rural  affairs  and  the 
development  of  pride  and  incentive  on  the  part  of  many  of  the 
country  people. 

I  have  watched  their  growth  with  much  interest  and  have  had 
something  to  do  in  giving  them  encouragement  and  facilities. 
However,  there  are  certain  perils  in  this  kind  of  effort,  and  I 
desire  to  offer  some  suggestions  of  warning,  while  at  the  same 
time  reaffirming  my  approval  of  the  general  idea  of  organizing 
boys  and  girls  for  mutual  emulation  and  improvement.  We  are 
now  coming  to  a  new  era  in  our  agricultural  work,  consequent 
on  the  passage  by  Congress  of  the  great  extension  bill  and  the 
beginning  of  the  organization  of  many  kinds  of  rural  betterment 

i  Adapted  from  "York  State  Rural  Problems,"  2:  71-79.  J.  B.  Lyon  Co., 
Albany. 


392  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

enterprises  on  a  national  basis.     It  is  time,  therefore,  that  we 
challenge  all  our  old  practices  and  make  plans  in  a  new  way. 

I  see  considerable  dangers  in  the  boys'  and  girls'  club  work, 
as  some  of  it  is  undertaken  at  the  present  time  or  into  which 
it  may  drift  in  the  future.  Perhaps  there  are  other  dangers, 
but  four  will  be  sufficient  for  discussion  at  the  moment. 

(1)  These  clubs  or  contests  may  not  represent  real  effort  on 
the  part  of  the  child.     Work  that  is  credited  to  the  child  may 
be   done  by  father,   mother,   brother,   sister,   or  by   associates. 
Probably  in  many  cases  the  child's  responsibility  is  only  nom- 
inal.    The  boy  or  girl  may  receive  credit  for  accomplishments 
that  are  not  his  or  hers  and  that  therefore  are  not  real ;  and  if 
they  are  not  genuine,  then,  of  course,  they  are  dishonest.     They 
start  the  child  on  a  wrong  basis  and  on  false  pretenses.     All 
such  work  should  be  under  careful  and  continuous  control. 

(2)  The  rewards  may  be  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  effort 
expended.     The  prize  should  have  relation  to  the  value  of  the 
effort  or  the  earning-power  of  the  work,  or  it  is  likely  to  be 
damaging  to  the  child  and  to  arouse  opposition  in  his  community 
or  among  his  associates.     Rewards  in  agriculture  have  not  come 
easily,  and  this  has  been  one  of  the  merits  of  the  occupation  in 
the  training  of  the  race,  and  it  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  agricul- 
ture is  a  strong  and  important  national  asset. 

When  we  make  the  rewards  too  easy,  we  not  only  cheapen  the 
effort,  but  we  lose  the  training  value  of  the  work.  We  must  be 
careful  that  we  do  not  let  the  rewards  in  agriculture  come  more 
cheaply  or  more  easily  than  in  other  occupations.  The  person 
must  work  for  what  he  gets  and  really  earn  it,  or  else  the  oc- 
cupation will  lose  in  dignity  and  standing  with  the  people. 
Agriculture  should  not  accept  gratuities. 

Some  time  ago  a  young  woman  came  to  my  office  to  secure  a 
subscription,  saying  that  if  she  accomplished  a  certain  number 
of  hundreds,  she  would  win  a  scholarship.  She  was  willing  to 
expend  weeks  of  very  hard  work,  to  go  to  much  inconvenience 
for  the  purple  of  earning  the  scholarship.  About  the  same 
time,  certain  young  boys  were  brought  to  my  office  as  one  stage 
in  a  trip  that  was  given  them  for  relatively  unimportant  effort 
in  an  agricultural  contest.  I  could  not  help  feeling  that  the 
rewards  of  exertion  were  unjustly  distributed.  The  travel-prizes 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES        393 

are  specially  likely  to  be  out  of  keeping  with  the  original  effort 
expended  by  the  child. 

We  should  take  every  pains  to  let  the  children  feel  that  the 
rewards  in  life  come  only  with  the  expenditure  of  adequate  effort. 

(3)  The  effect  of  these  contests  may  be  to  inflate  the  child 
and  to  give  him  undue  and  untruthful  estimate  of  his  own  im- 
portance.    A  shrewd  observer  of  a  boy's  prize  excursion  re- 
marked that  every  boy  after  he  got  home  should  be  punished; 
but  another  observer  suggested  that  the  boys  in  the  neighbor- 
hood would  probably  prevent  him  from  getting  the  bighead.     I 
do  not  indorse  these  remarks,  but  it  illustrates  the  dangers  that 
are  likely  to  accrue  unconsciously  to  the  child.     It  is  a  doubtful 
undertaking  to  single  out  certain  children  in  a  community  for 
unusual  recognition  or  reward. 

(4)  The  children  are  liable  to  be  exploited,  and  this  is  one 
of  the  most  apparent  dangers  in  the  whole  situation.     They  are 
likely  to  be  used  in  the  making  of  political  or  other  public  reputa- 
tion, or  in  accomplishing  advertising  and  propaganda  for  insti- 
tutions,  organizations,   publications,   commercial   concerns,   and 
other  enterprises,  or  to.  exploit  the  resources  of  the  state  or  the 
agriculture  of  a  region.     Children  should  never  be  made  the 
means  of  floating  anybody's  enterprise. 

Every  part  of  the  "boom"  and  "boost"  element  must  be  taken 
out  of  this  work,  and  all  efforts  to  make  a  display  or  a  demonstra- 
tion. Substantial  enterprises  may  stand  on  their  own  feet,  and 
the  work  with  children  may  stand  on  its  own  feet  and  not  be 
tied  up  to  undertakings  to  which  it  does  not  belong. 

Recognizing  the  dangers  that  may  come  from  the  organization 
of  boys'  and  girls'  clubs,  how  can  we  so  safeguard  them  in  the 
new  time  that  these  dangers  will  be  eliminated  or  at  least  re- 
duced to  the  minimum?  I  think  that  we  can  safeguard  them  if 
only  we  recognize  the  essential  nature  and  function  of  such 
contests. 

The  fundamental  consideration  is  that  all  this  kind  of  work 
is  educational.  It  is  not  primarily  agricultural  work,  not  under- 
taken directly  to  improve  the  farming  of  a  region.  The  primary 
consideration  is  its  effect  on  the  child.  If  we  cannot  accept  these 
propositions,  then  I  should  be  in  favor  of  giving  up  the  boys'  and 
girls'  contests. 


394  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

It  is  legitimate  to  use  domestic  animals  and  crops  for  the 
primary  purpose  of  improving  and  advertising  the  agriculture 
of  a  region ;  but  we  must  not  use  children  in  this  way.  Animals 
and  crops  are  agricultural  products;  children  are  not  agricul- 
tural products. 

If  these  positions  are  granted,  we  shall  agree  that  this  con- 
test work  between  children  must  be  put  more  and  more  into  the 
hands  of  those  who  are  trained  in  education  and  who  carry  the 
responsibility  before  the  public  for  educational  effort.  I  think 
that  this  kind  of  work  should  be  a  part  of  the  public  school  sys- 
tem. On  their  own  account,  schools  must  take  up  this  and 
similar  work  if  they  are  to  secure  the  best  results  for  themselves 
and  to  cover  their  own  fields.  The  organizing  or  laboratory  work 
at  home  under  the  direction  of  the  teacher  is  one  of  the  most 
important  means  of  tying  the  schools  and  the  homes  together 
and  making  the  school  a  real  part  and  parcel  of  the  community. 

When  this  time  shall  come,  the  work  with  crops  and  domestic 
animals  and  home  practices  will  be  a  regular  part  of  the  school 
day,  incorporated  inseverably  with  the  program  of  education. 
We  must  hope  for  the  time  when  there  shall  be  no  necessity  for 
the  separate  organization  of  such  clubs,  the  school  having  reached 
and  stimulated  the  situation  on  every  farm  and  in  every  home. 
It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  agricultural  agents  organize  the  con- 
test work  better  than  the  teachers.  Perhaps;  but  the  work  is 
essentially  school  work,  nevertheless,  and  we  should  now  be  look- 
ing for  results  in  the  long  future. 

Supervisors  and  superintendents  of  schools  and  teachers  will 
need  the  demonstration-practice  and  the  subject-matter  that  the 
agricultural  agent  can  give  them;  they  will  increasingly  call  on 
this  agent ;  and  herein  will  be  another  effective  means  of  tying  all 
rural  work  together  on  a  basis  of  cooperation  and  coaction. 

THE  RURAL  BOOK  HUNGER1 

M.   S   DUDGEON 

PROBABLY  no  enterprise  for  rural  betterment  has  borne  more 
fruit  than  the  traveling  library  system,  and  certainly  few  have 

i  Adapted  from  Rural  Manhood,  Vol.  6:303-307,  April,  1915.  County 
Work  Dept,  International  Com.  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  N.  Y. 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES  395 

more  promptly  shown  results.  Begun  as  a  benevolence,  it  has 
grown  to  be  an  important  part  of  an  educational  system. 

The  dearth  of  reading  matter  in  many  rural  homes  is  almost 
beyond  the  belief  of  those  to  whom  the  daily  paper,  the  weekly, 
monthly  and  quarterly  magazines,  the  well-filled  private  book 
shelves,  and  the  public  libraries,  general  and  special,  have  always 
been  a  matter  of  course.  To  one  accustomed  to  these,  they  are 
necessities,  and  he  little  realizes  the  conditions  which  led  that 
child  of  a  backwood  community  to  cherish  the  catalogue  of  a 
mail-order  house  as  a  choice  possession.  In  order  to  show  this 
lack  of  reading  matter  more  specifically  it  may  be  well  to  cite 
the  case  of  a  certain  township  in  the  Middle  West,  where  an  in- 
vestigation was  carried  on  to  learn  just  how  much  reading  was 
done.  The  principal  of  the  schools  of  a  small  city  near  by,  in  co- 
operation with  the  state  library  commission,  made  a  survey  of 
the  twenty-one  homes  in  this  sparsely  settled  township.  The  first 
important  discovery  was  that  not  one  adult  had  read  a  book 
during  the  last  year.  It  is  little  wonder,  for  there  was  not  a 
new  or  attractive  book  in  the  whole  three  hundred  owned  in  this 
whole  territory,  covering  one  hundred  and  fifty  square  miles. 

The  investigator  found  that  at  four  homes  there  was  not  even 
a  Bible,  which  he  had  wrongly  assumed  would  be  in  every  home, 
and  did  not  at  first  count  as  a  book,  while  five  homes  had  no 
other  book  than  the  Bible.  A  little  more  than  half  of  the  books 
of  fiction  in  the  community  were  of  the  dime-novel  variety.  In 
one  American  home,  the  family  consisting  of  father,  mother,  and 
ten  children  under  seventeen,  the  total  literary  equipment  con- 
sisted of  "The  Foreman's  Bride,"  "Wfio  is  the  Creator?" 
"Twenty  Years  of  Hustling,"  and  a  Bible.  The  boy  of  thir- 
teen years  of  age  said  that  "The  Foreman's  Bride"  was  his  favor- 
ite book  and  that  he  had  read  it  several  times.  Another  home, 
where  both  father  and  mother  were  Indians,  contained  about  fifty 
dime  novels,  with  no  other  books  or  periodicals  of  any  kind,  al- 
though both  parents  were  educated  at  Carlisle. 

In  two  homes  there  were  no  periodicals,  and  in  the  others  the 
magazines  were  chiefly  of  the  light  literature  type,  Comfort, 
Good  Stories,  Happy  Hours,  etc.  One  home  had  The  Woman's 
Home  Companion,  the  Cosmopolitan,  the  American  Home,  and 
Extension.  Forty  weekly  papers  and  eight  dailies  were  taken, 


396  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

two  of  the  latter  being  Bohemian  papers  with  strong  Socialistic 
tendencies. 

Another  investigation  made  in  a  seaboard  state,  not  more  than 
three  hundred  miles  from  New  York  City,  reveals  conditions  even 
more  startling,  the  data  being  collected  with  the  assistance  of  the 
school  teachers  throughout  the  community.  Great  care  was 
taken  and  the  conditions  found  should  be  fairly  representative, 
as  the  rural  population  of  the  state  is  almost  exclusively  native 
born ;  there  is  scarcely  a  district  in  the  state  more  than  ten  miles 
from  a  railroad ;  the  rural  free  delivery  brings  mail  to  every 
door;  there  is  a  compulsory  school  law;  and  the  state  maintains 
a  system  of  traveling  libraries,  whereby  any  school,  church,  or 
club  might  have  one  free  of  charge  upon  application. 

The  conditions  show  even  greater  lack  of  reading  matter  than 
in  the  West,  More  than  50  per  cent,  of  the  families  reported 
owned  no  books  whatever.  More  than  25  per  cent,  of  the  homes 
reported  that  they  took  no  periodicals  of  any  kind,  not  even  a 
local  newspaper.  About  94  per  cent,  took  no  periodical  of  a  gen- 
eral or.  literary  character.  Of  every  thousand  children  in  one 
county,  44  per  cent,  reported  that  they  read  nothing.  More 
than  50  per  cent,  of  the  households  in  this  same  county  reported 
that  they  owned  no  books. 

In  a  district  from  which  thirty-one  replies  were  received,  rep- 
resenting nineteen  families,  not  a  single  pupil  reports  having 
read  a  book.  Only  two  of  these  families  own  a  book,  ' '  The  Life 
of  McKinley"  in  both  cases.  In  eleven  of  the  nineteen  homes 
there  was  not  a  newspaper,  a  magazine  or  a  book.  Only  two  of 
seventeen  families  in*another  district  own  books;  one  has  lt Rob- 
inson Crusoe"  and  the  other  has  "The  War  with  Spain." 

These  investigations  show  the  value  of  traveling  libraries.  In 
one  school  from  which  seventeen  replies  came  (representing  nine 
households)  three  homes  were  utterly  without  books,  yet  sixteen 
of  the  seventeen  children  had  read  books  from  the  traveling 
library;  four  of  the  sixteen  had  never  read  a  book  from  any 
other  source,  and  the  sixteen  pupils  had  read  sixty-one  books 
from  this  library.  While  these  data  indicating  a  dire  need  for 
books  are  the  result  of  recent  investigations,  librarians  have  for 
a  long  time  appreciated  the  rural  need  for  good  literature,  and 
have  done  much  to  relieve  this  book  hunger.  Before  the  phrase 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES        397 

"rural  betterment''  passed  current,  if  not,  indeed,  before  it  had 
been  coined,  many  attempts  were  made  to  open  to  the  country 
boy  and  girl  the  educational  opportunities  found  in  good  books 
and  to  relieve  the  dull  monotony  of  the  country  life  by  attractive 
reading  matter.  In  at  least  thirty-three  states  efforts  are  now 
being  made  to  send  good  books  to  country  districts. 

Sometimes  the  books  are  furnished  by  the  public  library  of  an 
adjoining  city.  Occasionally  a  township  supplies  its  own  needs 
with  local  funds.  In  many  cases  the  county  is  the  unit  and  owns 
and  circulates  the  books.  Most  frequently,  however,  the  work  is 
done  by  state  library  commissions,  which,  by  sending  out  travel- 
ing libraries,  reach  hundreds  of  communities  which  otherwise 
would  be  without  books.  In  a  few  instances  the  books  have  been 
taken  to  the  very  door  of  the  farmhouse,  as  in  Delaware  and  in 
Maryland,  where  book  wagons. make  periodical  rounds.  There 
traveling  libraries  are  collections  of  from  thirty-five  to  one  hun- 
dred books  which  are  packed  in  stout  wooden  cases  and  sent  out 
by  the  state  or  the  county,  as  the  case  may  be.  They  are  made 
up  of  the  best  popular  books  in  fiction,  history,  travel,  biography, 
science  and  literature,  and  are  suited  to  the  needs  of  both  adults 
and  children.  Where  there  is  a  local  need  there  may  be  added 
a  selection  of  books  printed  in  German,  Norwegian,  Bohemian, 
Danish,  Polish  or  Yiddish  in  order  that  those  older  rural  resi- 
dents who  cannot  read  the  English  language  may  be  served. 
All  forms  of  the  traveling  library  are  intended  for  farming 
communities  and  for  those  small  villages  which  do  not  enjoy 
public  library  privileges. 

If  a  few  persons  in  a  community  are  sufficiently  interested  in 
any  subject  to  make  a  serious  study  of  it  they  are  furnished  a 
collection  of  books  which,  with  a  study  outline,  enable  them  to 
constitute  themselves  a  study  club.  There  is  practically  no  limit 
to  the  number  of  topics  which  may  be  studied  in  this  way.  Ma- 
terial of  various  kinds,  books,  pamphlets,  periodicals,  and  pic- 
tures will  be  sent  upon  any  subject  from  Egyptian  history  to 
the  latest  phase  of  the  up-to-date  sociological  problem.  The  de- 
sires of  every  one  are  met  as  nearly  as  possible,  whether  he  wishes 
to  make  a  study  of  Flemish  art  or  to  learn  the  best  way  of  pre- 
venting potato  scab. 

When  the  people  of  any  community  have  read  a  library  it  is 


398  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

returned  to  the  state  or  county  authorities  where  the  books  are 
checked  up,  a  record  of  their  circulation  is  taken,  and  necessary 
repairs  are  made,  after  which  it  is  sent  to  another  community. 
The  rural  community  is  at  no  expense  except  that  the  cost  of 
transportation  is  generally  paid  by  the  local  patrons.  In  no 
event,  however,  is  even  an  insignificant  financial  payment  on  the 
part  of  the  patrons  made  the  condition  of  obtaining  the  books 
from  the  local  custodian. 

The  rule  is  that  the  traveling  library  shall  be  kept  in  the  most 
centrally  located  and  most  easily  accessible  place  that  can  be 
found.  The  local  postoflfice  is  an  ideal  place,  but  a  general  store 
often  serves  the  purpose  well.  Frequentty  the  local  merchant 
finds  that  his  increased  trade  well  repays  him  for  the  time  spent 
in  caring  for  the  library,  since  the  presence  of  the  books  attracts 
the  public  to  his  place  of  business.  Where  there  is  no  postoffice 
or  store,  a  creamery,  a  cheese  factory,  or  a  private  residence  be- 
comes the  home  of  the  little  group* of  books.  Sometimes  the 
library  is  located  in  a  schoolhouse,  but  since  a  schoolhouse  is 
closed  evenings,.  Saturdays,  and  during  long  vacation  periods, 
the  books  so  located  are  not  always  accessible.  It  is  found  also 
that  adults  do  not  usually  patronize  libraries  which  are  located 
in  schoolhouses. 

Records  indicate  that  the  tastes  of  country  readers  differ  very 
little  from  the  tastes  of  city  people.  An  examination  of  the  re- 
corded circulation  of  certain  books  explodes  the  theory  that  the 
interests  of  country  people  are  peculiar  to  country  districts. 
Farmers  refuse  to  read  the  books  which  theorists  think  they 
ought  to  read.  For  example,  even  the  best  book  on  farm  topics 
is  rather  less  popular  in  the  country  than  in  the  city.  On  the 
other  hand,  a  book  that  is  popular  in  the  city  is  likely  to  be 
popular  in  the  country.  Further,  however,  a  good  book  sent  to 
the  country  is  more  likely  to  be  read  there  than  in  the  city,  since 
there  is  in  the  country  little  or  no  competition  from  the  poor, 
but  possible  more  attractive,  best-seller. 

It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  the  country  boy  or  girl  is  very 
much  the  same  sort  of  an  individual  as  is  the  city  youth  and 
likes  the  same  sort  of  books.  Prof.  B.  A.  Heydrick,  of  the  High 
School  of  Commerce  of  New  York  City,  asked  six  hundred  city 
boys  to  give  him  a  list  of  the  twenty  books  which  they  liked  best. 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES        399 

Care  was  taken  to  secure  the  independent,  individual  preference 
of  each.  At  about  the  same  time  Mr.  O.  S.  Rice,  of  the  State 
Superintendent's  office,  in  Wisconsin,  made  a  similar  request  of 
the  boys  and  girls  in  attendance  in  one  hundred  and  fifty  high 
schools  in  the  state,  many  of  these  being,  the  smaller  village  and 
country  high  schools.  The  result  of  the  vote  among  the  city  boys 
was  as  follows : 

Author  and  Title  Votes 

Stevenson — Treasure  Island 222 

Dickens— Oliver  Twist 100 

Cooper — Last  of  the  Mohicans 81 

Dumas — Three   Musketeers 78 

Cooper — The    Spy , .  61 

Stevenson — Kidnapped   58 

Barbour— Half    Back 57 

Dumas — Count  of  Monte  Cristo 55 

Barbour — Crimson    Sweater 51 

Doyle — Sherlock  Holmes . 46 

Tarkington — Monsieur    Beaucaire 44 

Twain — Tom    Sawyer 44 

Scott — Talisman    43 

Dickens— Tale  of  Two  Cities 42 

Longfellow — Courtship  of  Miles  Standish 37 

Hughes — Tom  Brown's  School   Days    35 

Longfellow — Evangeline     34 

Thurston — Masquerader   34 

Doyle — Sign  of  the  Four 33 

London— Call  of  the  Wild 33 

The  country  boys  in  Wisconsin,  some  of  whom  were  in  smaller 
villages  and  cities,  chose  the  following  books  as  their  favorites : 

Author  and  Title 
Stevenson — Treasure  Island. 
Scott — Ivanhoe. 
London— Call  of  the  Wild. 
Cooper — Last  of  the  Mohicans. 
Churchill— The  Crisis. 
Twain — Tom  Sawyer. 
Wallace— Ben-Hur. 
Eliot — Silas  Marner. 
Cooper — Pathfinder. 
Cooper — The   Spy 
Dickens— Tale  of  Two  Cities. 


400  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Cooper — Deerslayer. 

Wright— Shepherd  of  the  Hills. 

Doubleday — From  Cattle  Ranch  to  College. 

Eggleston — Hoosier  Schoolmaster. 

Fox — Trail  of  the  Lonesome  Pine. 

Dickens — David  Copperfield. 

Wister — The  Virginian. 

Eggleston — Last  of  the  Flatboats. 

Dixon — Leopard  Spots. 
s 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  "Treasure  Island"  heads  both  lists  and 
the  presence  of  the  "Last  of  the  Mohicans,"  "The  Spy,"  "Tom 
Sawyer,"  "Tale  of  Two  Cities"  and  "The  Call  of  the  Wild" 
upon  both  lists  indicates  that  boys  are  boys  in  the  country  and 
in  the  city.  'It  is  rather  interesting  to  note  also  that  in  addition 
to  these  excellent  books  which  are  indicated  upon  both  lists, 
the  country  boys  selected  Scott's  "Ivanhoe,"  Dickens'  "David 
Copperfield,"  Eliot's  "Silas  Marner,"  and  Wallace's  "Ben- 
Hur. ' '  While  some  deplore  that  only  fiction  is  represented  upon 
these  lists  we  suspect  that  a  perfectly  sincere  expression  from  a 
group  of  adults  would  have  given  much  the  same  results  in  this 
particular.  On  the  whole  the  investigation  indicates  that  the 
tastes  of  the  American  boys,  whether  in  the  city  or  country,  are 
clean  and  wholesome.  City  and  country  boys  alike  have  an  evi- 
dent fondness  for  books  of  violence  and  heroism,  but  the  vio- 
lence is  not  lawless  and  the  heroism  is  genuine. 

The  vote  taken  by  the  boys  living  in  rural  Wisconsin  bears  evi- 
dence that  good  use  will  be  made  of  book  facilities  when  they 
are  offered.  The  Wisconsin  boy's  acquaintance  with  the  best 
books  grows  out  of  the  fact  that  under  the  Wisconsin  law  each 
school  district  is  required  to  expend  for  books  out  of  the  funds 
coming  to  it  from  the  state  at  least  ten  cents  for  each  person 
of  school  age  within  the  district.  Something  over  sixty-five  thou- 
sand dollars  is  thus  spent  annually  for  books  in  these  school- 
houses.  None  of  this  is  spent  in  the  large  cities,  so  that  this 
sum  goes  into  the  smaller  cities  and  villages  and  into  the  coun- 
try districts.  In  addition  to  this  the  state  expends  a  consider- 
able sum  of  money  in  maintaining  a  state  traveling  library  sys- 
tem, and  during  the  last  year  over  forty  thousand  volumes  were 
sent  out  to  over  six  hundred  different  rural  communities  scat- 
tered OTjer  the  entire  state. 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES        401 

Some  time  since  a  rather  careful  investigation  was  made  of 
the  efficiency  of  different  library  systems.  It  was  discovered  that 
the  state  traveling  library  systems  circulated  every  volume  owned 
with  greater  frequency  than  did  the  average  city  library  in  six 
representative  states  chosen  at  random.  The  average  city  library 
circulated  each  volume  owned  only  2.22  times  during  the  year, 
whereas  one  state  traveling  library  system,  according  to  its 
actual  recorded  circulation,  circulated  every  volume  2.77  times 
per  year.  As  it  is  very  difficult  to  get  unpaid  custodians  of 
traveling  libraries  to  record  every  circulation,  it  is  likely  that 
the  actual  circulation  much  exceeded  the  recorded  circulation. 
It  is  also  probably  true  that  each  time  a  book  is  taken  from  a 
traveling  library  situated  in  the  country  it  is  read  by  many  more 
persons  than  is  a  book  taken  from  a  city  library  by  a  resident  of 
the  city.  Several  members  of  the  farmer's  family  are  likely  to 
read  every  book  which  gets  into  the  farm-house.  The  records  of 
another  state  traveling  library  system  showed  that  each  volume 
owned  was  circulated  4.07  times  per  year. 

The  average  city  library  in  the  six  states  tested  expended  12.6 
cents  for  each  time  a  volume  was  circulated,  whereas  the  two 
state  traveling  library  systems  tested  spent  7  cents  and  7.7  cents 
respectively  for  each  time  a  volume  was  circulated.  Fourteen 
county  traveling  library  systems  in  one  state  expended  only  5 
cents  for  each  time  a  volume  was  circulated. 

We  think  we  may  safely  assume  that  the  need  for  books  in  the 
country  is  greater  than  the  need  in  the  city.  If  this  is  correct 
amd  if  the  traveling  library  systems  circulate  the  books  on  their 
shelves  more  frequently  than  do  city  libraries,  and  if  it  costs  the 
traveling  library  systems  less  to  deliver  good  books  in  book  hun- 
gry rural  districts  than  it  costs' to  deliver  the  less  needed  books 
to  urban  dwellers,  are  not  the  traveling  library  systems  more 
efficient  than  are  city  libraries? 

The  data  collected  seem  to  indicate  clearly  four  points:  first, 
many  rural  communities  are  sadly  in  need  of  reading  matter; 
second,  country  people  will  read  when  given  the  opportunity ; 
third,  country  people  do  not  differ  greatly  from  city  people  in 
their  choice  of  books;  fourth,  money  invested  in  traveling 
libraries  is  well  invested. 


402  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

THE  COMMUNITY  FAIR1 

J.    STERLING    MORAN 

THE  COMMUNITY  FAIR  is  a  miniature  county  fair  conducted  by 
the  people  of  a  community  to  promote  its  social  and  economic 
life.  It  arouses  interest  and  pride  in  local  achievement  by  afford- 
ing an  opportunity  for  the  exhibition  of  the  best  products  of  the 
community,  fosters  the  spirit  of  cooperation  by  bringing  the 
people  together  in  friendly  rivalry,  and  affords  an  opportunity 
for  wholesome  community  recreation. 

These  fairs  are  held  quite  generally  throughout  the  country  and 
are  known  in  different  localities  as  community  fairs,  district  fairs, 
township  fairs,  school  fairs,  grange  fairs,  and  farmers '-club  fairs. 
The  fall  festivals,  harvest  home  festivals,  and  farm,  home,  and 
school  festivals,  which  are  held  in  certain  localities,  are  adapta- 
tions of  the  same  general  idea. 

The  community,  township,  or  district  fair  makes  its  appeal  di- 
rectly to  all  members  of  the  community,  while  the  fair  conducted 
by  the  farmers'  club  appeals  especially  to  the  members  of  the 
organization  concerned. 

The  school  fair  in  its  simplest  form  is  an  exhibition  of  the 
work  done  and  the  products  grown  by  the  school  children.  From 
the  school  fair,  with  its  community-wide  interest,  it  is  an  easy 
step  to  include  the  products  of  the  older  girls  and  boys  who  are 
not  in  school,  and  ultimately  the  products  and  work  of  all  the 
members  of  the  community. 

Other  types  of  community  fairs  vary  from  the  "harvest  home 
thanksgiving  festival"  of  New 'England,  which  was  originally 
dominated  by  the  religious  motive  and  had  very  few  exhibits 
aside  from  those  brought  for  decorative  purposes,  to  the  "farm, 
home,  and  school  festivals"  of  the  Middle  West,  where  the  main 
feature  is  the  exhibition  of  products  and  where  recreation  of  all 
kinds  forms  a  prominent  part. 

A  single  organization  is  seldom  influential  enough  to  enlist 
all  the  elements  in  a  community  for  the  purpose  of  conducting  a 

i  Adapted  from  Farmers'  Bulletin  870,  United  States  Department  of 
Agriculture. 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES  403 

community  fair.  Every  organization  in  the  community  ought  to 
feel  responsible  for  the  success  of  the  enterprise. 

The  first  step  is  to  get  together  the  leaders  of  the  different 
organizations  in  the  community  for  the  purpose  of  considering 
whether  or  not  it  is  advisable  to  hold  a  community  fair.  It  is 
well  to  present  at  this  meeting  a  general  outline  of  the  method 
of  procedure  for  the  conduct  of  the  fair.  If  the  plan  is  ap- 
proved by  this  group,  a  community  meeting  is  called,  at  which 
full  explanation  is  made  regarding  the  nature  and  purposes  of  a 
community  fair  and  the  methods  of  conducting  it.  This  meeting 
should  be  well  advertised  by  posters,  newspaper  notices,  and  post 
cards  addressed  to  each  family,  calling  attention  to  the  place  and 
date  and  emphasizing  the  importance  of  the  meeting.  If  the 
community  decides  to  hold  a  fair,  the  next  step  is  to  form  an 
organization,  either  temporary  or  permanent,  and  elect  officers, 
consisting  of  a  president,  a  vice-president,  and  a  secretary-treas- 
urer. Committees  should  also  be  chosen. 

The  president  keeps  in  close  touch  with  the  other  officers  and 
the  chairmen  of  all  the  committees  and  is  the  correlating  force 
and  executive  officer  of  the  fair.  The  other  officers  perform  the 
duties  usually  pertaining  to  their  offices.  The  committees  should 
have  from  three  to  five  members  each,  including  at  least  one 
young  person  of  school  age. 

The  amusement  and  entertainment  committee  has  charge  of  all 
athletics  and  field  sports,  games,  folk  dances,  pageants,  and 
parades,  and  also  arranges  for  music,  motion  pictures,  speakers, 
and  other  attractions. 

The  arrangements  and  decorations  committee  arranges  for  a 
place  to  hold  the  fair  and  looks  after  the  decorations,  using 
flowers,  autumn  leaves,  evergreens,  bunting,  flags,  and  other 
available  material.  This  committee  cooperates  with  the  several 
committees  having  charge  of  the  different  exhibit  departments 
and  assigns  such  tables,  shelves,  and  wall  space  as  are  needed. 

The  publicity  committee  enlists  the  help  of  the  local  news- 
papers and  supplies  them  regularly  with  articles  concerning 
the  fair  and  with  a  comprehensive  report  after  it  has  been  held. 
Regular  notices  are  given  in  schools  and  churches  and  at  all 
public  gatherings  for  several  weeks  prior  to  the  holding  of  the 
fair.  Handmade  posters  are  often  used,  and  when  well  made 


404  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

they  give  individuality  and  attractiveness  to  the  advertising. 
Printed  handbills  or  "fliers"  giving  detailed  lists  of  articles  that 
may  be  exhibited  in  each  department  are  distributed  to  every 
family  in  the  community  several  weeks  before  the  fair.  In  the 
preparation  of  these  suggestive  lists  the  publicity  committee 
works  with  the  chairman  of  the  committees  having  charge  of  the 
several  exhibit  departments  of  the  fair. 

While  it  is  to  be  expected  that  the  exhibits  at  a  community 
fair  will  receive  special  attention  for  the  purpose  of  exhibition, 
nevertheless  they  should  represent  as  nearly  as  possible  the  nor- 
mal production  of  the  community,  for  one  of  the  purposes  of 
holding  a  community  fair  is  to  stimulate  a  desire  to  increase  the 
quantity  and  to  improve  the  quality  of  the  average  product. 
Freak  exhibits  of  all  kinds  are  to  be  avoided. 

Personal  solicitation  has  been  found  to  be  a  most  effective 
means  of  inducing  people  to  make  exhibits.  Each  exhibitor 
should  realize  that  he  is  in  competition  only  with  other  members 
of  the  community  and  that  it  will  not  be  possible  for  some 
stranger  to  take  all  the  prizes. 

Satisfactory  results  are  usually  obtained  in  community  fairs 
by  grouping  certain  classes  of  exhibits.  Thus,  in  the  live-stock 
department,  horses,  cattle,  swine,  poultry,  and  pets  are  exhibited. 
In  the  farm-products  department  are  shown  different  varieties  of 
grains  and  seeds,  grasses  and  forage  crops,  field  beans  and  peas, 
peanuts  and  potatoes,  together  with  dairy  products  and  bee 
products.  The  orchard  and  garden  department  includes  such 
exhibits  as  fruits  and  vegetables,  ornamental  shrubbery,  and 
flowers. 

The  woman 's-work  and  fine-arts  department  includes  prepared 
foods,  canned  goods,  jellies,  preserves,  and  pickles,  and  all  kinds 
of  needlework,  together  with  such  exhibits  as  paintings,  metal 
work,  raffia  and  reed  basket  work,  pottery,  painted  china,  and 
handmade  jewelry. 

The  school  and  club  department  includes  all  exhibits  from  or- 
ganizations in  the  community  which  wish  to  bring  the  results 
of  their  work  before  the  community  in  this  way. 

The  historical  relics  department  includes  firearms,  swords, 
caps,  and  other  war  relics,  old  looms,  spinning  wheels,  and  arti- 
cles produced  on  them,  old  pictures,  drawings,  documents,  Indian 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES        405 

relics,  family  relics,  geological  specimens,  and  objects  of  interest 
from  other  lands. 

Besides  the  committees  having  charge  of  these  departments, 
there  are  often  others  that  conduct  such  activities  as  a  better- 
babies  contest,  a  health  exhibit,  or  a  parcel-post  exhibit. 

Judges  of  ability  and  experience  should  be  secured.  The  state 
agricultural  colleges  and  other  institutions  are  usually  willing  to 
render  such  assistance  as  their  force  of  workers  and  means  will 
permit.  There  are  often  other  individuals  with  exceptional  ex- 
perience who  may  be  available  at  little  or  no  expense.  When 
possible,  judges  should  be  chosen  from  outside  the  community. 

The  relatively  small  number  of  exhibits  at  a  community  fair 
makes  it  possible  for  the  judges  to  explain  the  basis  upon  which 
the  awards  were  made.  Besides  allaying  criticism,  this  plan  has 
great  educational  value.  If  standard  score  cards  can  be  ob- 
tained from  reliable  sources,  they  should  be  put  into  the  hands 
of  prospective  exhibitors  several  weeks  prior  to  the  fair,  and  all 
judging  should  be  done  on  this  basis. 

It  has  often  been  found  that  community  fairs  do  not  appeal  to 
certain  persons  who  have  been  in  the  habit  of  making  exhibits  at 
fairs  where  cash  premiums  are  awarded.  The  primary  aim  of  an 
exhibitor  at  a  community  fair,  however,  should  not  be  to  win  a 
money  prize  as  compensation  for  preparing  his  exhibit.  Expe- 
rience has  proved  that  the  awarding  of  money  prizes  not  only 
makes  the  cost  of  a  fair  prohibitive,  but,  by  placing  the  emphasis 
on  money  instead  of  on  the  honor  of  achievement,  defeats  the 
purpose  of  the  fair. 

The  best  results  have  been  obtained  where  ribbons  have  been 
awarded,  the  color  of  the  ribbon  denoting  the  grade  of  the  prize. 
If  money  is  available  for  printing  the  ribbons,  each  one  should  be 
so  printed  as  to  show  the  occasion,  place,  and  date.  Awards 
should  be  made  on  the  basis  of  the  excellence  of  the  exhibit,  and 
no  premium  should  be  awarded  to  a  poor  exhibit.  Accordingly, 
for  the  information  of  exhibitors,  it  is  well  to  publish  for  each 
class  of  exhibits  the  requirements  that  are  to  be  considered  by 
the  judges  in  awarding  premiums. 

There  are  numerous  instances  where  valuable  premiums  have 
been  given  by  commercial  concerns  for  awards  to  individuals  or 
organizations  that  have  been  successful  along  the  line  in  which 


406  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  donors  were  particularly  interested.  In  a  Middle  Western 
State  premiums  were  offered  for  the  best  kept  farm  and  home 
premises  and  to  the  farm  and  home  showing  the  greatest  im- 
provement in  a  given  time. 

The  community  fair  does  not  require  large  sums  of  money  for 
premiums  or  other  expenses,  and  for  this  reason  no  charges  are 
made  for  entry  of  exhibits  or  gate  admissions.  A  small  amount 
of  money,  however,  is  necessary  to  pay  for  printing  and  general 
advertising,  lumber  for  tables,  shelves,  and  live-stock  pens,  rib- 
bons for  premiums,  and  such  decorative  material  and  incidentals 
as  are  needed.  This  money  is  raised  either  by  subscription  or  by 
selling  advertising  space  in  the  premium  list  or  fair  catalogue. 

The  managements  of  county  fairs  are  beginning  to  realize  the 
value  of  the  community  exhibit  as  a  factor  in  making  the  county 
fair  serve  its  purpose  as  an  agricultural  exhibition.  Liberal  pre- 
miums have  been  offered  for  these  community  exhibits,  either  in 
cash  or  in  such  form  as  to  be  of  community  use,  as,  for  example, 
reference  books  on  agricultural  subjects  to  be  kept  in  the  com- 
munity library,  a  watering  trough  conveniently  located,  or  a 
drinking  fountain. 

One  state  has  recently  passed  a  law  providing  for  the  holding 
of  community  fairs  and  appropriating  money  for  the  purpose 
of  packing  community  exhibits  and  transporting  them  to  the 
larger  fairs. 

An  interesting  county  fair,  made  up  of  seventy-two  community 
exhibits,  was  recently  held  in  a  county  in  the  Middle  West. 
There  were  no  races  or  sideshows.  The  10,000  people  in  attend- 
ance spent  their  time  for  two  days  in  visiting  and  inspecting  the 
exhibits  and  in  wholesome  recreation  under  the  supervision  of  an 
expert  recreational  director  from  a  neighboring  city.  The  ex- 
hibits, occupying  in  all  about  15,000  square  feet  of  floor  space 
and  55,000  square  feet  of  wall  space,  were  housed  in  vacant 
buildings  on  the  business  street  and  in  tents.  Each  community 
had  its  booths  and  the  several  communities  vied  with  each  other 
in  making  attractive  exhibits  of  the  products  of  the  farm,  home, 
and  school. 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES  407 


THE  SMITH-HUGHES  ACT  l 

THIS  act  is  quite  similar  in  some  of  its  features  to  the  Agricul- 
tural Act  of  1914.  There  is  the  same  provision  for  continuing 
and  increasing  appropriations,  beginning  with  $1,700,000  in 
1917,  and  rising  to  $7,200,000  in  1925.  The  available  money  will 
be  distributed  among  all  states  which  agree  to  contribute  sums 
equal  to  their  allotments  and  to  conform  to  the  terms  of  the  act. 
The  appropriation  provides  for  the  creation  of  three  distinct 
funds,  viz.,  (1)  for  paying  salaries  of  teachers,  supervisors  or 
directors  of  agricultural  subjects;  (2)  for  paying  the  salaries  of 
teachers  of  trade,  home  economics  and  industrial  subjects,  and 
(3)  for  training  the  teachers  and  others  mentioned  under  (1) 
and  (2).  The  basis  of  distribution  among  the  states  is  rural 
population  under  (1),  urban  population  under  (2),  and  total 
population  under  (3).  A  state  may  accept  benefits  under  one  or 
more  of  these  funds,  as  it  prefers. 

The  act  creates  a  Federal  Board  of  Vocational  Education, 
consisting  of  the  Secretaries  of  Agriculture,  Commerce  and  La- 
bor, the  United  States  Commissioner  of  Education,  and  three 
other  members,  to  be  appointed  by  the  President,  of  whom  one 
is  to  represent  manufacturing  and  commercial  interests,  one  agri- 
cultural interests,  and  one  labor  interests.  The  board,  besides 
administering  the  act  and  supervising  the  work  in  the  several 
states,  will  carry  out  investigations  of  various  kinds  relating 
to  vocational  education,  cooperating,  so  far  as  may  be  advisable, 
with  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  the  Department  of  Com- 
merce and  the  Bureau  of  Education. 

i  Adapted  from  "The  Smith-Hughes  Act  for  Vocational  Education," 
Scientific  American,  p.  130,  N.  Y.,  Aug.  25,  1917. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

CHAUTAUQUA 

Elude,    G.    L.     Leaven    of    Chautauqua.    World    To-day,    21:1120-2, 

Sept.,  1911. 

Chautauqua:     Symposium.     Independent,  82:497-504,  June  21,  1915. 
McClure,  W.  F.      Chautauqua  of  To-day.     Review  of  Reviews,  50 :  53- 

9,  July,  1914. 


408  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Pearson,  Paul  M.     The  Chautauqua  Movement.     The  Annals,  40 :  211- 

216,  March,  1912. 
Ransom,  W.  L.     Founding  of  the  Chautauqua.     Independent,  89 :  380, 

Feb.  26,  1917. 
Strother,    F.     Great    American    Forum.     World's    Work,    24:511-64, 

Sept.,  1912. 
Vincent,  G.  E.     What  is  Chautauqua  ?     Independent,  79 : 17-9,  July  6, 

1914. 

CLUBS— BOYS  AND  GIRLS 

Benson,  0.  H.  School  Credit  for  Boys'  and  Girls'  Club  Work  and 
Extension  Activities  in  Agriculture  and  Home  Economics.  Jour- 
nal of  Proceedings  and  Addresses  of  the  National  Education  Asso- 
ciation, August,  1915,  pp.  1144-1154. 

Creswell,  Mary  E.  Girls'  and  Boys'  Club  Work— A  Manual  for  Rural 
Teachers,  Bulletin  101,  Vol.  4,  No.  11.  Georgia  State  College  of 
Agriculture,  Athens,  1916. 

Kercher,  0.  Boys'  Agricultural  Clubs,  Kentucky  Agricultural  Exten- 
sion Circular,  Vol.  46,  pp.  1-51,  Lexington,  1917. 

Johnson,    Stanley.     Youth    Leads    the    Way — The    Corn    Club    Boys. 

American  Magazine,  Vol.  80,  pp.  8-13,  September,  1915. 
Youth  Leads  the  Way — The  Canning  Girls.     American  Magazine,  80 : 

20-25,  October,  1915. 

Youth  Leads  the  Way — Pigs  and  Baby  Beef  (Boy's  Clubs).     Amer- 
ican Magazine  80 :  43-47,  November,  1915. 

Organization  and  Instruction  in  Boys'  Corn  Club  Work.  U.  S.  D.  A. 
Bureau  of  Plant  Industry,  Cir.  803,  1915. 

Swain,  J.  E.  Hand  Book  for  Boys'  Agricultural  Clubs  with  Sugges- 
tions to  Teachers,  and  Bibliography  of  Bulletins  and  Books.  Okla- 
homa Agricultural  Extension  Circular  43,  pp.  1-90,  1917. 

EXTENSION  SERVICE  AND  VOCATIONAL  EDUCATION 

Lapp,  John  A.     Important  Federal  Laws,  pp.  96-106.     B.  F.  Bowen 

&  Co.,  Indianapolis,  1917. 

National  Aid  for  Vocational  Education,  School  and  Society,  Vol.  I, 
pp.  649-657,  May  8,  1915. 

Leake,  Albert  H.  Vocational  Education  for  Girls  and  Women.  Chap. 
I.  Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1918. 

Monahan,  A.  C.  Federal  Aid  for  Vocational  Training:  The  Smith- 
Lever  and  Smith-Hughes  Bills.  Journal  of  Home  Economics  7: 
245-248,  May,  1915. 

Pearson,  R.  A.  Organization  and  Administration  under  the  Smith- 
Lever  Act.  Proceedings  of  the  Association  of  American  Agricul- 
tural Colleges  and  Experiment  Stations,  pp.  116-129,  1916. 

Second  Report  of  the  Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Education,  1918. 
Government  Printing  Office,  Washington. 

Stimson,  Rufus.  Vocational  Agricultural  Education  by  Home  Pro- 
jects. Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1919. 

True,  A.  C.  Federal  Legislation,  Regulations,  and  Rulings  Affecting 
Agricultural  Colleges  and  Experiment  Stations.  U.  S.  Department 
of  Agriculture  States  Relations  Service,  August  25,  1917. 


OTHER  EDUCATIONAL  AGENCIES        409 

Home   Economics  Work   Under  the   Smith-Lever  Act.     Journal   of 

Home  Economics,  7 :  353-355,  August,  September,  1915. 
Woolman,  Mary  Schenck.     The  Smith-Hughes  Bill.     Journal  of  Home 
Economics,  8 :  241-245,  May,  191G. 

FAIRS 

Bailey,  L.  H.  County  and  Local  Fairs.  In  his  The  Country  Life  Move- 
ment, pp.  165-177,  Macmillan,  New  York,  1011. 

Community  Service  Week  in  Nortli  Carolina,  by  the  Community  Ser- 
vice Week  Committee,  Superintendent  of  Public  Instruction,  Ra- 
leigh, N.  C.,  1914. 

Hamilton,  John.  Influences  Exerted  by  Agricultural  Fairs.  The  An- 
nals, 40 :  200-210,  March,  1912. 

Jordan,  S.  M.  Agricultural  Exhibits  and  Farmers'  Institutes.  Mis- 
souri State  Board  of  Agriculture,  Monthly  Bulletin,  Vol.  14,  Jan- 
uary, 1916,  Jefferson  City. 

Meisnest,  C.  W.  Harvest  Fairs  in  County  and  Township  Schools. 
American  City  (T.  and  C.  ed.),  15:  255-S,  September,  1916. 

Morgan,  E.  L.  The  Community  Fair.  The  Massachusetts  Agricultural 
College  Extension  Service,  Extension  Bui.  No.  27,  Amherst,  May, 
1919. 

Nelson,  W.  L.  The  County  Fair  in  Missouri.  Missouri  State  Board  of 
Agriculture,  Monthly  Bulletin,  Vol.  14,  No.  7,  July,  1916. 

Rubinow,  S.  G.  Community  Fair — A  Factor  in  Rural  Education, 
School  and  Society,  Vol.  6,  pp.  96-101,  July  28,  1917. 

Vogt,  Paul  L.  The  County  Fair.  In  his  Introduction  to  Rural  So- 
ciology, Chapter  XIX,  331-341,  Appleton,  N.  Y.,  1917. 

FARM  BUREAUS  AND  FARM  DEMONSTRATION  WORK 

Bailey,  L.  H.  The  Farm  Bureau  Idea,  In  his  York  State  Rural  Prob- 
lems, 1 : 132-146,  Lyon,  Albany,  1915. 

The  Farm  Bureau  Movement.     In  his  York  State  Rural  Problems,  II : 
80-102,  Lyon,  Albany,  1915. 

Bronson,  W.  H.  Farm  Management  Demonstration  Work  in  Massa- 
chusetts. Massachusetts  Agricultural  College  Extension  Bui.  9, 
Amherst,  1916. 

Burrit,  M.  C.  The  Farm  Bureau  as  an  Agent  in  Local  Development. 
Journal  of  Proceedings  and  Addresses  of  the  National  Education 
Association,  1916,  pp.  614-619. 

The  County  Farm  Bureau  Movement  in  New  York  State.     Bui.  60, 
New  York  Department  of  Agriculture,  Albany,  1914. 

Hurd,  W.  D.  Farm  Bureau  and  County  Agent  Movement.  American 
City,  (Town  and  County  Edition),  Vol.  12,  pp.  100-2,  February, 
1915. 

Johnson,  Edward  C.  The  Agricultural  Agent  and  Farm  Bureau  Move- 
ment in  Kansas.  Extension  Bui.  2,  Kansas  State  Agricultural 
College,  Manhattan,  1914. 

Lloyd,  W.  A.  Status  and  Results  of  County  Agricultural  Agent  Work 
in  the  Northern  and  Western  States,  1915.  ^  U.  S.  D.  A.  States  Re- 
lations Service,  Document  32,  Circular  1,  Ext.  N. 


410  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Knapp,  S.  A.     Farmers'  Cooperative  Demonstration  Work,  U.  S.  D.  A. 

Yearbook,  1900,  pp.  153-00. 

How  the  Whole  Country  Demonstrated.     U.  S.  D.  A.,  Yearbook,  1915, 
pp.  225-48. 

FARMERS'  INSTITUTES 

Carney,  Mabel.     Farmers'  Institutes  and  the  Agricultural  Press.     In 

Country  Life  and  the  Country  School,  pp.  90-102,  Row,  Chicago, 

1912. 
Hamilton,  John.     Farmers'  Institute  and  Agricultural  Extension  Work 

in  the  United  States  in  1913,  U.  S.  D.  A.,  Office  of  Experiment 

Stations,  Bui.  83,  1914. 

RURAL  LIBRARIES 

Dudgeon,  M.  S.  The  Rural  Book  Hunger,  Rural  Manhood,  Vol.  VI, 
p.  303,  September,  1915. 

Dyer,  Walter  A.  The  Spread  of  County  Libraries,  World's  Work,  30 : 
609-613,  September,  1915. 

Eddy,  Harriet  G.  California  County  Free  Libraries.  Journal  of  Pro- 
ceedings and  Addresses  of  the  National  Education  Association, 
1911,  pp.  1026-1029. 

Magill,  H.  N.  W.  The  Rural  Library  in  Practice.  Library  Journal, 
43 :  84-86,  Jan.,  1918. 

Preston,  Josephine  C.  The  Country  Child  in  the  Rural  Library.  Na- 
tional Education  Association,  1914,  pp.  796-798. 

Rice,  0.  S.  Rural  School  Libraries:  Their  needs  and  possibilities. 
National  Education  Association,  pp.  740-774,  1913. 

Tarbell,  Mary  Anna.  A  Village  Library.  Massachusetts  Civic  League, 
Leaflet  No.  3,  Boston,  1909. 

Utley,  George  B.  The  Rural  Traveling  Library.  The  Playground  6: 
486,  487. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  COUNTEY  CHUECH 

TEN  YEARS  IN  A  COUNTRY  CHURCH 4 

MATTHEW   B.    MC  NUTT 

THE  simple  story  of  a  decade  of  ministerial  work,  such  as  the 
magazine  has  requested  me  to  write,  is  this : 

One  cold  Saturday  morning  in  February,  1900,  a  seminary 
fellow-student  chanced  to  meet  me. 

"Hello,  Mac,"  he  said,  "don't  you  want  to  preach  to-morrow, 
thirty  miles  out  of  Chicago?  I  have  two  appointments." 

I  told  him  that  I  would  go.  I  boarded  the  first  train  and 
landed  about  noon  in  Naperville,  111.  I  was  met  at  the  station 
by  an  old  gentleman  whom  I  took  to  be  a  farmer.  I  was  right, 
and  he  informed  me  that  his  church  was  six  miles  in  the  coun- 
try. This  was  rather  unwelcome  news,  for  the  day  was  dis- 
agreeable and  I  was  not  clad  for  such  a  drive ;  but  I  was  treated 
to  a  good  dinner  and  we  made  the  venture.  The  good  roads  at- 
tracted my  attention  at  once,  and  my  farmer  friend  told  me 
that  all  the  roads  were  thus  paved  with  gravel.  And  such 
splendid  farm-buildings  as  we  passed  I  had  never  before  seen 
on  my  travels.  We  saw  horses  and  cattle  that  looked  as  if  they 
had  just  come  from  a  state  fair.  My  expectations  had  risen  high 
at  what  I  had  observed  and  I  was  eager  to  see  that  country 
church. 

At  last  it  hove  in  sight — a  very  plain  structure,  built  half  a 
century  before,  with  a  single  room  and  with  surroundings  that 
gave  a  stranger  the  impression  that  the  church  was  the  last 
thing  in  the  community  to  receive  any  consideration.  It  was 
altogether  incommensurate  with  its  thrifty  surroundings.  The 
fences  about  the  manse  and  church-lots  had  toppled  over,  and 
the  old  horse-sheds  were  an  eye-sore  to  every  passerby.  The 

i  Adapted  from  World's  Work,  21:  13761-13766,  December,  1910. 

411 


412  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

manse  seemed  to  be  about  the  only  house  in  the  community  that 
was  void  of  all  comforts  and  conveniences.  One  of  the  elders, 
a  farmer,  had  been  preaching  for  three  years,  until  he  died ;  and 
the  last  regular  minister  had  resigned  with  $400  due  on  his 
salary,  which  the  church  borrowed  to  square  the  account.  Six 
of  the  nine  Sunday-school  teachers  were  members  of  one  family 
— and  they  were  good  teachers,  too.  The  three  elders  were  also 
trustees,  and  each  taught  a  class  in  the  Sunday-school.  One 
of  these  elders  was  also  Sunday-school  superintendent,  Sunday- 
school  treasurer,  church  treasurer,  and  treasurer  of  benevolences. 
A  hall  had  been  fitted  up  in  the  neighborhood  to  be  the  home 
of  an  organization  that  called  itself  "The  New  Era  Club." 
But  dancing  seemed  to  be  the  only  amusement,  though  the  club 's 
original  promoters  had  hoped  for  better  things.  No  one  had 
united  with  the  church  for  five  years.  The  only  services  were 
preaching  and  Sunday-school  on  the  Sabbath,  and  a  meeting  of 
the  Women's  Missionary  Society.  Collections  were  taken  once 
a  year  for  missions  and  ministerial  relief,  and  this  was  practically 
the  extent  of  the  benevolence. 

Here  was  a  church  that  had  lived  in  a  community  for  sixty- 
seven  years.  Its  organization  had  been  effected  beneath  some 
trees  with  a  tribe  of  Indians  curiously  watching  the  proceeding 
from  a  distance.  Many  of  the  original  Scotch,  English  and 
Yankee  families  had  moved  away  or  died;  and  their  places  had 
been  often  filled  by  Germans,  who  were  invariably  of  a  different 
faith.  How  to  sustain  the  life  of  this  institution  had  become  a 
serious  problem  that  worried  those  who  were  responsible  for  its 
direction.  Some  of  the  people  were  thinking  that  the  country 
church  had  outlived  its  usefulness.  None  knew  better  than  the 
leaders  that  things  were  not  going  well  with  their  kirk,  and 
none  were  more  grieved  about  it. 

I  preached  that  Sunday  and  was  invited  to  preach  again  the 
following  Sunday.  I  did  so,  and  at  the  close  of  the  service  was 
asked  if  I  would  consider  a  call.  I  replied  that  I  would  finish 
my  work  in  the  seminary  in  May  and  would  then  be  ready  for  a 
job  somewhere;  and  that  I  saw  no  good  reason  why  I  should 
not  become  the  pastor  of  a  farmers'  church.  The  salary  pro- 
posed was  $600  a  year,  with  a  manse  and  fiv^  acres  of  land.  In 
the  meantime  a  letter  came  from  a  presbytery  in  the  West  (where 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  413 

I  had  preached  during  two  summer  vacations),  strongly  urging 
me  to  go  there  and  take  charge  of  three  churches  at  nearly 
double  the  salary  offered  here.  That  looked  like  a  much  larger 
proposition — financially  and  otherwise — and  I  was  drawn  to- 
ward it. 

The  Du  Page  people  were  to  decide  by  vote  the  following  Sun- 
day whether  or  not  they  wanted  me.  Sick  from  a  cold  that  I 
had  contracted  on  the  first  trip,  I  had  asked  a  classmate  to  go  in 
my  stead — requesting  him  to  wait  at  his  room  until  I  had  pre- 
pared a  message  asking  the  congregation  not  to  consider  me  as  a 
candidate.  For  some  reason  the  classmate  did  not  wait.  I 
hastened  downtown,  tjiinking  that  I  could  overtake  him  at  the 
station,  but  I  reached  the  gate  just  in  time  to  see  the  train  dis- 
appearing round  the  bend.  The  vote  was  taken  and  the  result 
came  to  me  two  days  afterward  in  a  letter  from  one  of  the  elders, 
saying  that  out  of  forty-eight  ballots  there  had  been  only  one 
"no."  A  letter  from  the  same  man  came  the  next  day  explain- 
ing that  the  one  negative  vote  had  been  cast  by  a  little  13-year- 
old  girl  who  had  not  understood  how  to  prepare  her  ballot. 

Here  was  truly  a  great  opportunity,  looking  me  squarely  in 
the  face — a  call  from  the  country !  I  reconsidered  the  matter 
and  concluded  that  I  would  cast  my  lot  with  those  country-folk 
— for  better  or  for  worse. 

Why  I  came  to  this  country  church,  six  miles  from  a  railroad 
and  without  even  a  village  surrounding  it,  I  cannot  explain.  I 
had  received  no  special  training  for  it  other  than  that  I  had 
been  born  on  a  farm  and  brought  up  in  a  country  church.  The 
days  spent  in  college  and  in  the  seminary  were  so  full  of  hard 
study  that  the  thought  of  where  my  "homiletic  bias"  should 
eventually  be  turned  loose  never  once  entered  my  mind.  I  sim- 
ply had  a  general  feeling  that  in  due  time  there  would  be  some 
good,  hard  work  for  me  somewhere,  I  cared  not  where. 

When  I  came  to  the  field  the  first  of  May,  I  was  surprised 
and  not  a  little  disappointed  to  find  that  these  good  people  would 
not  consent  to  an  installation  until  they  had  tried  the  new  min- 
ister at  least  a  year.  This  was  the  Scotch  conservatism  that  was 
lurking  in  the  congregation.  However,  I  did  not  feel  so  badly 
when  I  discovered  that  this  was  their  regular  custom. 

There  was  no  one  to  occupy  the  manse  with  me,  so  I  furnished 


414  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

two  rooms  for  myself  and  arranged  to  take  my  meals  with  a 
neighborly  farmer.  When  a  year  had  passed,  the  people  were 
then  willing  enough  to  install ;  but  the  pastor,  somewhat  dissatis- 
fied with  this  lonely  way  of  living  and  with  no  immediate  pros- 
pects of  anything  better,  thought  it  unwise  to  form  a  permanent 
relationship  with  the  church.  Another  year  fled  and  there  was  a 
"better-half"  in  the  manse.  The  congregation  voted  again — 
unanimously  as  before — and  the  installation  took  place. 

One  of  the  hardest  things  to  overcome  was  their  preconceived 
notions  about  the  church  and  about  country  life.  I  found  it  diffi- 
cult to  change  the  old  way  of  doing  things.  The  only  hope  of 
progress  seemed  to  be  in  training  the  younger  generation.  But 
how  to  train  it  and  in  what,  were  the  great  problems  to  be 
solved.  One  thing  was  certain:  the  church  society  as  it  was 
organized  and  conducted  did  not  seem  to  be  all  that  the  com- 
munity needed.  Many  of  the  people  had  grown  indifferent  to 
the  church,  and  those  who  were  interested  did  not  seem  to  know 
just  what  was  lacking.  Where  could  this  country  church  and 
pastor  look  for  light?  Not  to  other  country  churches,  for  they, 
too,  were  in  the  dark.  Not  to  the  town  and  city,  because  their 
methods  were  devised  for  an  environment  presenting  altogether 
different  conditions.  There  was  nothing  left  for  us  to  do,  there- 
fore, but  to  study  the  situation  and  work  out  the  solution  our- 
selves. And  that  is  just  what  we  have  been  doing. 

I  soon  realized  that,  in  order  to  succeed  in  a  community  like 
this,  a  country  parson  must  do  a  great  deal  more  than  preach 
and  visit  his  flock.  His  duties  must  vary,  as  mine  did,  from 
janitor  to  head  financier, — depending  upon  how  much  the  people 
have  been  trained  to  do,  and  also  upon  how  much  they  are  able 
to  do. 

The  first  work  that  we  attempted  (apart  from  what  is  ordi- 
narily considered  church  work)  was  to  develop  systematically  the 
musical  talent  of  the  community.  This  was  done  through  an  old- 
fashioned  singing-school.  All  the  young  people  were  taught  to 
read  music  and  to  sing.  Quartettes  were  formed;  musical  in- 
struments of  various  kinds  were  purchased  by  individuals;  and 
an  orchestra  was  started.  There  are  few  homes  in  the  parish  now 
that  do  not  have  music  of  some  kind.  A  great  many  of  the  young 
men  and  women  have  been  encouraged  to  take  private  lessons  in 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  415 

voice  and  on  the  piano,  violin,  and  cornet.  Some  of  them  had 
thought  that  they  possessed  no  talent  for  music ;  they  got  their 
start  in  the  singing-school. 

This  musical  talent  was  put  to  good  use.  The  chorus  choir 
has  done  fine  work — singing  around  in  the  different  homes  one 
or  two  evenings  every  week — for  the  sick,  for  the  aged,  and  for 
those  who  can  not  go  anywhere  to  hear  music.  Our  quartettes 
have  been  in  demand  to  sing  in  the  surrounding  towns  on  special 
occasion,  such  as  funerals  and  farmers'  institutes.  There  are 
many  special  entertainments  at  the  church  in  which  our  musi- 
cians take  a  prominent  part.  At  our  last  Children's  Day  service 
a  chorus  of  eighty  voices  sang,  accompanied  by  a  number  of  in- 
struments. Some  of  our  young  women  are  now  teaching  music 
in  the  community. 

Parallel  with  the  music,  we  cultivate  the  art  of  public  speak- 
ing. Even  the  very  small  children  are  given  places  on  our  pro- 
grams. Extemporaneous  speaking  is  practiced  in  all  our  so- 
cieties. 

These  public  occasions  are  a  great  stimulus  to  our  young  folks 
to  do  their  best  in  declaiming.  In  many  cases  the  parents  be- 
come interested  and  send  their  children  to  some  teacher  in  elocu- 
tion for  more  thorough  training,  especially  when  the  son  or  the 
daughter  is  to  read  or  debate  at  some  big  event.  Last  fall  a 
team  from  our  young  men's  society  debated  the  income  tax  ques- 
tion with  a  team  of  business  men  from  town.  At  different  times 
we  have  given  plays  in  the  church.  The  last  was  a  story  from 
one  of  the  magazines  which  a  woman  of  this  parish  dramatized 
for  the  occasion. 

These  home-talent  entertainments  have  proved  to  be  more  pop- 
ular than  the  attractions  we  get  from  the  lyceum  bureaus,  some 
of  which  cost  $100  a  night.  We  have  had  audiences  of  between 
400  and  500  people.  Many  town-folks  drive  out  to  their  country- 
neighbors '  entertainments.  We  have  found  that  to  the  great 
majority  of  our  people  this  kind  of  work  is  far  more  attractive 
than  the  cheap  amusements  which  they  are  apt  to  get  outside 
of  the  community  at  the  public  parks  and  shows  in  the  surround- 
ing towns. 

The  pride  of  the  community  is  our  band  of  athletes.  It  is  a 
sight  to  see  these  husky  farmer  boys  in  base-ball  suits.  We  have 


416  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

a  number  of  teams ;  and  if  a  stranger  were  to  come  along  almost 
any  Saturday  afternoon  in  the  base-ball  season,  he  would  find  a 
game  in  progress  near  some  farm-house.  No  Sunday  base-ball 
here !  It  is  no  less  a  delight  to  see  a  goodly  number  of  country 
"fans"  in  evidence,  from  both  sides  of  the  house.  The  annual 
field-day  is  one  of  the  notable  events  of  the  year.  Hundreds  of 
people  assemble  to  witness  the  athletic  contests  and  its  ball- 
games. 

The  young  men  of  the  church,  prompted  by  a  spirit  of  patriot- 
ism, have  undertaken  to  rescue  the  Fourth  of  July  from  the 
shameful  and  degrading  way  in  which  it  is  so  often  celebrated. 
They  plan  to  make  it  first  of  all  a  day  of  patriotic  inspiration. 
A  good  local  program  is  provided,  supplemented  by  the  best 
public  speaker  that  can  be  secured  from  outside.  Then  it  is 
made  a  social  event  as  well  as  a  day  of  innocent  sports  and 
pastimes.  Some  of  the  folks  who  went  last  Fourth  to  an  adja- 
cent city,  to  see  a  flying-machine  that  didn't  fly,  came  back  in 
the  afternoon  to  .our  celebration,  saying  that  it  was  "lots  bet- 
ter fun"  to  watch  the  country  sports. 

Come  with  me  now  to  one  of  our  young  men's  meetings — the 
young  men's  Bible-class.  The  program  for  this  evening  is  a  mock 
court-trial.  The  case  in  hand  is  Jones  vs.  Brown,  for  assault  and 
battery  with  intent  to  do  great  bodily  injury.  The  judge,  very 
dignified,  sits  on  the  bench.  Before  him  are  the  plaintiff  and 
the  defendant,  with  their  favorite  attorneys  and  all  the  neces- 
sary court-officers.  The  jury  is  carefully  selected;  the  witnesses 
are  examined ;  the  case  is  tried  in  due  form ;  the  jury  is  charged, 
and  the  verdict  returned.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  there  is  "a 
heap  of  fun"  at  such  a  trial.  Besides,  the  boys  learn  a  great 
deal  about  practical  affairs,  for  each  is  required  to  look  up  the 
duties  of  his  office  beforehand  and  explain  to  his  associates. 
Perhaps  a  watermelon  is  devoured  at  the  close;  then  the  fellows 
visit  and  sing  for  a  while  and  go  home  feeling  that  they  have  had 
"a  grand  time." 

Next  time  it  is  something  else — an  old-fashioned  spelling-bee, 
or  a  story-night,  or  what-not.  They  discuss  all  sorts  of  ques- 
tions and  do  all  sorts  of  things.  There  are  upward  of  fifty  en- 
rolled in  the  class  now.  It  also  meets  every  Sunday  morning  for 
Bible-study,  and  these  Sunday  sessions  are  quite  as  well  at- 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  417 

tended  as  the  monthly  meetings.  It  is  taught  by  the  pastor. 
These  same  lads  conduct  a  lecture-course — not  for  pecuniary 
profit,  but  for  the  sole  purpose  of  bringing  wholesome  entertain- 
ment within  reach  of  all.  Everybody  attends,  irrespective  of 
creed. 

The  young  men  own  and  operate  a  small  printing-press  and 
(with  the  assistance  of  the  pastor)  do  all  the  church  printing. 
They  hold  religious  meetings  and  entertainments  in  the  public 
school-houses  during  the  winter  and  in  a  grove  during  warm 
weather.  In  the  pastor's  absence  a  number  of  the  men  speak 
at  the  Sunday  service.  This  class  and  the  young  women's  class 
have  become  great  powers  in  the  church.  From  them  we  select 
teachers  and  officers  for  the  church  and  Sunday-school. 

If  you  were  to  accompany  me  to  one  of  our  young  women's 
monthly  meetings,  you  would  find  thirty  or  more  girls  and  young 
women  with  needles,  busily  engaged  in  making  little  garments 
for  poor  children  in  the  city,  chatting  as  they  sew.  Some  mem- 
bers of  the  society,  who  have  completed  courses  in  sewing,  in- 
struct the  others.  Or,  if  we  arrive  in  time  for  the  beginning 
of  the  meeting,  we  might  find  them  studying  "On  the  Trial  of 
the  Immigrants,"  "The  Uplift  of  China,"  "Korea  in  Transi- 
tion," or  some  other  live  book  or  subject.  This  study  is  sand- 
wiched in  between  music  and  devotional  exercises.  At  the 
proper  time,  a  signal  is  given  and  the  young  ladies  arrange  their 
chairs  in  groups  of  four  and  have  placed  upon  their  laps  lunch- 
boards  laden  with  good  things  to  eat  that  have  been  prepared  by 
the  member  or  members  of  the  society  at  whose  home  the  meeting 
is  held.  Then,  home  they  go.  These  meetings  are  much  en- 
joyed by  our  young  women  and  it  is  no  task  to  secure  their 
attendance. 

You  would  see  similar  proceedings  at  the  monthly  women's 
meetings  except  that  (if  it  were  winter)  you  would  find  a  sprink- 
ling of  men  in  the  assembly.  The  husbands  and  fathers  come 
— mostly  for  the  sociability  afforded,  though  they  do  discuss,  in 
a  very  informal  way,  the  leading  topics  of  the  day  and  the  busi- 
ness of  farming  and  stock-raising.  The  mothers,  in  addition  to 
their  mission-study,  consider  topics  pertaining  to  housekeeping, 
the  care  and  training  of  children,  home-building,  and  other  prac- 
tical subjects.  The  society  has  forty  members. 


418  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

We  are  obliged  to  minimize  the  number  of  meetings  held,  on 
account  of  the  great  difficulty  that  country  people  have  in  get- 
ting together.  We  have  few  meetings  and  make  each  count  for 
much. 

A  great  deal  is  made  of  sociability  and  fellowship.  In  fact,  the 
church  is  practically  the  social  center  of  the  neighborhood.  The 
best  socials  that  we  have  are  those  attended  by  all  the  family— 
the  older  people  and  the  children  taking  part  in  the  games  and 
the  frolic.  We  are,  indeed,  just  like  one  family.  The  mothers 
come  and  bring  their  babies.  The  little  ones  romp  and  play  till 
they  grow  tired  and  sleepy;  then  they  are  taken. to  the  mothers' 
room  and  tucked  away  in  a  little  bed  provided  for  the  purpose 
— and  all  goes  merrily  on. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  day  in  all  the  year  is  what  we  call  our 
"Annual  Meeting,"  which  is  held  on  the  third  Saturday  in 
March.  Its  principal  objects  are  inspiration  and  fellowship,  and 
it  certainly  does  give  the  dead-level  gait  a  severe  jolt.  It  is  an 
all-day  meeting,  and  the  whole  country-side  assembles  in  full 
force.  The  ladies  serve  a  banquet  at  noon — sometimes  to  250 
people.  We  usually  have  two  or  three  good  speakers  from  out- 
side, besides  the  best  music  that  our  home  talent  can  produce. 
This  is  the  grand  round-up  of  the  year's  work.  Reports  and 
letters  from  absent  members  are  read.  Some  one  always  speaks 
tenderly  and  lovingly  of  those  who  have  passed  away  during  the 
year.  A  blessed  day,  this ! 

Other  inspirational  meetings  are  held  once  in  awhile  for  the 
various  societies.  One  was  held  recently  for  the  young  men's 
Bible-class  and  was  attended  by  100  young  men. 

A  new  feature  which  we  are  planning  for  this  winter  is  a 
number  of  study  courses — in  Scientific  Farming,  Domestic 
Science,  Sociology,  and  Civil  Government.  Landscape  Garden- 
ing will  also  be  taken  up  with  a  view  to  encourage  the  country 
people  to  beautify  the  environment  of  their  homes. 

It  is  not  our  intention  to  make  of  the  church  a  knowledge-im- 
parting institution,  but  rather,  through  it,  to  foster  the  spirit  of 
inquiry  and  to  encourage  the  investigation  of  truth  by  supplying 
the  occasion  and  the  opportunity  for  such  investigation.  The 
desire  for  knowledge  and  development  once  inspired,  the  way 
is  found  and  things  get  done. 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  419 

Symbolical  of  this  new  life  in  Du  Page  Church  and  one  of  our 
greatest  achievements  is  the  new  church-home  recently  dedicated. 
It  cost,  including  furnishings,  $10,000.  This  building  enter- 
prise was  a  good  test  of  the  confidence  and  the  interest  which 
the  community  has  in  the  church.  Everybody  gave  to  the  build- 
ing-fund— Protestants,  German-Lutherans,  Catholics,  and  men 
of  no  church — and  they  all  helped  willingly  to  haul  the  ma- 
terials. A  new  pace  was  set  in  church  building  by  this  people 
when  they  subscribed  all  the  money  before  the  work  of  building 
was  begun.  No  collection  was  taken  at  the  dedication  for  build- 
ing or  furnishing  purposes. 

The  new  church,  with  a  maximum  seating-capacity  of  500  peo- 
ple, is  a  model  of  neatness  and  comfort.  It  has  a  separate  Sun- 
day-school apartment  (with  a  number  of  class-rooms),  pastor's 
study,  choir-room,  cloak-rooms,  mothers'  room,  and  vestibule — 
all  on  the  first  floor.  These  floors  are  all  covered  with  cork  car- 
pet. In  the  basement  are  the  dining-room,  kitchen,  toilet,  and 
furnace-room.  The  building  is  equipped  with  lighting-plant, 
water-works,  and  hot-air  furnaces.  We  entertained  the  Chicago 
Presbytery  last  fall,  and  the  city  brethren  all  said  that  they  had 
never  seen  the  like  of  this  church  in1  the  open  country.  And,  by 
the  way,  more  yellow-legged  chickens  entered  the  ministry  that 
day  at  Du  Page  Church  than  ever  before  or  since ! 

Three  doors  in  the  old  structure  and  twenty-one  in  the  new — 
that  is  an  intimation  of  the  increased  efficiency  and  of  the 
greater  number  of  avenues  of  usefulness  which  this  modern 
country-church  seeks  to  enter.  It  aims  to  be  of  service  to  the 
whole  man — body,  mind,  and  spirit.  It  seeks  to  surround  him 
with  an  atmosphere  that  will  stimulate  him  to  live  his  own  life 
and  to  cultivate  a  harmonious  development  of  all  his  faculties 
and  powers. 

With  all  this  practical  work,  the  spiritual  has  not  been  neg- 
lected nor  minimized.  In  fact,  more  attention  has  been  given  to 
it — in  training  the  youth  and  in  making  the  public  worship  at- 
tractive and  helpful.  The  people  have  not  grown  less  religious 
or  less  reverent.  Quite  the  opposite.  The  Sunday  services  have 
never  been  so  largely  attended  nor  the  interest  so  well  sus- 
tained. The  membership  of  the  church  has  increased  from  80  to 
163,  and  the  Sunday-school  from  100  to  300.  And,  in  addition 


420  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

to  building  the  church,  remodeling  the  m-anse,  making  other  re- 
pairs, and  increasing  the  pastor's  salary  40  per  cent.,  the  people 
have  contributed  to  benevolences  in  the  last  decade  $5,270 — as 
against  $6,407  contributed  during  the  fifty  years  preceding. 

The  effect  that  this  new  life  is  having  upon  the  people  of  the 
parish  is  remarkable.  Whole  families  that  formerly  had  no  in- 
terest in  the  church  or  in  the  uplift  of  the  community  have  be- 
come active  members.  Some  of  them  are  now  officers  and  lead- 
ers. They  not  only  lend  their  service  but  they  give  freely  of 
their  means  to  support  the  work.  Their  conception  of  life  is 
growing  larger.  They  are  buying  books,  pictures  and  musical 
instruments.  They  are  installing  in  their  dwellings  the  modern 
comforts  and  conveniences,  including  the  daily  newspapers,  maga- 
zines, and  religious  weeklies,  where  formerly  there  were  none 
of  these.  Many  who  once  gave  nothing  to  benevolences  are  now 
regular  contributors.  Others  that  formerly  gave  but  a  pittance 
have  grown  generous. 

We  see  in  the  young  people  a  growing  ambition  to  get  an  edu- 
cation. They  seem  to  be  inspired  with  a  determination  to  make 
the  most  out  of  their  lives.  The  honor  students  at  a  neighboring 
high  school  in  town  for  the  last  five  years  have  been  young  people 
from  our  community.  A  number  of  these  young  men  and  women 
have  taken  honors  at  our  State  university.  Nor  is  the  studying 
all  done  in  college  and  away  from  home.  The  fireside  university 
is  becoming  more  and  more  popular. 

There  is  noticeable  in  the  people  an  increased  willingness  to 
take  part  in  the  various  activities  of  the  community's  life,  which 
may  be  attributed  to  the  fact  that  they  are  better  prepared  for 
service.  A  new  community-spirit  and  harmony  have  sprung  up, 
with  a  wholesome  pride.  This  has  been  brought  about  by  making 
the  church  serve  the  whole  community  rather  than  minister  to  a 
particular  part  of  it. 

Whether  it  be  the  result  of  a  more  abundant  life  in  this  vicinity 
or  not,  farms  here  are  at  a  premium.  Whenever  a  farm  is  adver- 
tised for  rent,  half  a  dozen  applicants  are  after  it  the  next  day. 
Persons  living  outside  the  parish  have  remarked  to  pastor  and 
people  again  and  again :  * '  How  we  wish  we  lived  nearer  to  your 
church!'  And  there  has  not  been  in  our  community  the  ten- 
dency for  farmers  to  sell  or  rent  and  move  to  town. 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  421 

The  greatest  achievement  of  all,  however,  is  the  orderly,  peace- 
loving,  enterprising  community  that  surrounds  the  church,  and 
the  lot  of  clean,  sturdy,  capable  young  people  that  are  growing 
up  in  the  church.  These  are  the  fruits  we  covet  most  and  by 
which  we  wish  to  be  known  and  judged. 


LAND  TENURE  AND  THE  RURAL  CHURCH  1 

HENRY   WALLACE 

THE  prosperity  of  the  rural  church  has  in  all  ages  and  in  all 
countries  been  determined  largely  by  the  tenure  by  which  farmers 
hold  their  lands.  A  prosperous  country  church  means  a  rela- 
tively large  rural  population — large  enough  to  support  a  minis- 
ter, to  push  the  work  of  the  church  vigorously,  to  impress  its 
ideals  of  life  and  character  on  the  community,  and  to  do  its  part 
in  extending  the  gospel  to  outside  sections  and  to  foreign  lands. 

It  requires,  second,  that  farming  be  on  an  economic  basis ;  that 
is,  that  farmers  are  making  money.  For  the  church  is  always 
and  everywhere  supported,  not  by  capital,  but  by  profits ;  and  if 
the  farmer  is  not  making  a  comfortable  living  or  is  sinking  his 
capital,  he  does  not  have  the  means  of  supporting  the  church. 
And  if  he  does  not  have  the  means,  his  will  to  support  the  church 
will  be  ineffective. 

In  the  third  place,  the  prosperous  rural  church  requires  a  rea- 
sonably stable  population.  So  much  of  the  Christian  life  lies  in 
Christian  relations  with  neighbors,  with  employees,  with  employ- 
ers, with  the  whole  community  life,  that  a  roving  farm  popula- 
tion cannot,  even  if  it  would,  develop  Christian  graces  or  impress 
itself  favorably  on  a  community  of  unbelievers.  The  farm  owner 
who  has  moved  to  town  and  is  renting  his  land  cannot  be  expected 
to  be  a  real,  vital  force  in  the  rural  church.  Nor  can  the  tenant 
who  has  a  one-year  lease,  or  whose  tenure  is  uncertain,  be  ex- 
pected to  cultivate  the  Christian  graces  by  intimate  fellowship 
with  his  neighbors  and  associates  or  fellow  church-members;  in 
other  words,  to  take  root  in  the  community  and  become  a  part 
of  it. 

i  Adapted  from  "The  Church  and  Country  Life,"  pp.  232-242,  Missionary 
Education  Movement  of  the  U.  S.  and  Canada,  New  York  City,  1916. 


422  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

One  thing  more.  The  prosperous  country  church  requires  that 
there  be  an  agreement  among  the  members  as  to  the  big  things 
for  which  the  church  stands:  the  sinfulness  of  men;  the  possi- 
bility of  redemption  from  sinfulness ;  growth  in  Christian  graces ; 
the  efficiency  of  the  gospel  to  make  better  husbands,  better  wives, 
better  parents,  better  children,  better  farmers,  better  business 
men,  better  neighbors,  better  citizens.  Success  need  not  be  ex- 
pected if  minor  things  of  which  Jesus  said  nothing  and  upon 
which  the  apostles  laid  no  emphasis,  such  as  forms  of  church 
government  and  modes  of  baptism,  are  regarded  as  the  essential 
things  for  which  the  church  stands.  If  the  church  is  to  be  suc- 
cessful, there  must  be  toward  these  matters  a  body  of  sentiment 
which  makes  hearty  cooperation  and  Christian  fellowship  possible. 

These,  as  I  see  it,  are  the  conditions  of  the  prosperous  rural 
church.  These  conditions  prevailed  when  the  rural  church  was 
in  the  height  of  its  prosperity  in  the  early  part  of  the  last  century. 
There  was  then  a  dense  population  per  square  mile  in  the  settled 
portions  of  the  country,  because  the  farmer  was  then  a  child 
of  the  woods,  hewing  his  way  painfully  through  the  forests  of 
the  Eastern  and  Middle  States,  and  requiring  a  lifetime  to  clear 
up  a  quarter  section  or  even  an  eighty.  He  was  a  man  of  the 
ax  and  cradle  and  scythe  and  flail.  Rural  congregations  were 
large  then ;  and  the  spirit  of  the  farmer  of  that  day  is  reflected 
in  the  names  that  he  gave  to  his  church, — names  fragrant  of 
the  spirit  of  piety  and  devotion  and  showing  close  acquaintance 
with  the  Bible, — Bethel,  Rehoboth,  Mount  Zion,  Ebenezer. 

There  was  then  no  pull  to  the  city,  for  the  cities  were  small, 
as  they  must  needs  be,  since  there  was  not  the  wherewithal  to 
feed  a  large  city  population,  nor  adequate  means  of  transporta- 
tion. Labor  was  cheap,  land  was  cheap,  living  was  cheap ;  and 
the  farm  was  mainly  a  means  of  supporting  a  large  family 
cheaply.  There  was  no  landlord,  no  tenants.  While  no  one  was 
getting  rich,  all  but  the  incompetent  were  getting  ahead,  and  the 
minister  was  the  outstanding  big  man  in  the  community — "guide, 
philosopher,  and  friend"  to  all,  a  consoler  in  sickness  or  sorrow, 
an  adviser  in  trouble.  There  was  unity  as  to  the  great  doctrines 
of  Christianity.  Not  that  all  were  agreed;  but  the  various  na- 
tionalities, with  their  forms  of  worship  and  religious  thought  and 
customs,  grouped  themselves  together  in  localities — the  Pennsyl- 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  423 

vania  Dutch  here,  the  Scotch  and  Scotch-Irish  there,  the  Quakers 
elsewhere,  the  Yankees  in  other  groups. 

All  this  changed  when  the  farmer  emerged  from  the  woods  and 
drew  long  furrows  in  the  rich,  fertile  soil  of  the  prairies;  and 
still  greater  was  the  change  when,  at  the  close  of  the  war,  the 
government  gave  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres  of  land  at  the  cost 
of  surveying  ($1.25  an  acre)  to  any  landless  man  in  the  wide 
world  who  wanted  it  and  who  would  become  a  citizen  of  the 
United  States. 

Then  began  the  rush  for  these  cheap  lands,  a  rush  from  New 
England,  from  the  Middle  States,  from  the  South,  and  from  Eu- 
rope. The  farming  population  began  a  game  of  leap-frog.  The 
church  organizations,  awake  to  the  importance  of  securing  a  foot- 
hold in  this  new  land,  pushed  their  missionary  enterprises,  aiming 
to  occupy  strategic  points.  The  result  was  a  mingling  together 
of  men  who,  while  they  agreed  on  fundamentals,  gave  special 
importance  to  distinctives ;  and  a  still  further  result  was  the  over- 
churching  of  the  entire  prairie  country. 

Then  the  rural  church  began  to  decline;  for  the  introduction 
of  railroads  and  of  farm  machinery  and  a  far  greater  use  of  horse 
power  decreased  rural  population  per  square  mile.  It  has  con- 
stantly been  decreasing  ever  since  from  purely  economic  causes. 
Still  the  rural  church  did  fairly  well,  although  gradually  declin- 
ing in  the  size  and  number  of  congregations,  until  the  last  thirty 
years,  when  another  set  of  economic  conditions  began  to  render 
it  less  efficient. 

When  thoughtful  men  began  to  see  that  there  was  no  more 
choice  land  to  be  given  away ;  when  the  great  growth  of  city  popu- 
lation not  merely  in  the  United  States  but  in  the  Old  World  (the 
result  of  cheap  food  furnished  by  the  farmers  of  the  United  States 
at  less  than  the  cost  of  growing  it)  began  to  bring  the  price  of 
grain  up  to  the  cost  of  production  and  above  it,  land  began  to 
advance.  In  the  corn  belt,  the  wheat  belt,  and  the  fruit  belt  land 
has  increased  at  the  rate  of  about  10  per  cent,  per  annum. 

The  country  church  then  began  to  decline  more  rapidly. 
Farmers  began  to  rent  their  farms  and  move  to  town.  Capital- 
ists began  to  invest  in  lands  as  soon  as  the  net  income  would  equal 
the  interest  on  savings,  and  speculators  began  to  buy  land  far  in 
advance  of  its  productive  value,  on  the  assumption  that  this  10 


424  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

per  cent,  per  annum  increase  in  price  would  continue.  One  re- 
sult of  this  was  an  enormous  increase  in  tenancy,  until  about 
37!/2  per  cent,  of  the  tillable  lands  of  the  United  States  was 
farmed  lay  tenants.  In  the  corn  belt  from  40  to  50  per  cent,  of 
the  land  is  farmed  by  tenants,  and  in  the  cotton  belt  from  50  to 
70  per  cent. 

Meanwhile  the  use  of  improved  machinery  and  of  horse  power 
instead  of  man  power  tended  to  increase  the  size  of  farms  and 
to  decrease  the  population  per  square  mile.  A  recent  investiga- 
tion by  the  Iowa  Agricultural  Department  shows  that,  while  the 
increase  in  the  size  of  farms  that  are  farmed  by  their  owners  is 
less  than  4  per  cent.,  the  increase  in  the  size  of  those  farmed  by 
tenants  is  16  per  cent.  It  shows  further  that  in  sections  in  which 
land  is  bought  for  speculation  tenancy  has  increased  very  rapidly. 
We  have  three  main  classes  of  landlords:  retired  farmers,  capi- 
talists, and  speculators,  or  speculating  capitalists ;  and  the  lands 
of  all  these  classes  are  necessarily  farmed  by  tenants. 

Inasmuch  as  we  have  not  yet  really  begun  to  farm  in  the  West, 
but  are  simply  mining  our  soil  and  selling  its  fertility  ( at  present 
at  a  profit),  the  tenure  of  the  tenant  is  mainly  for  one  year;  this 
condition  makes  about  45  per  cent,  of  the  population  of  the  open 
country  in  Iowa  more  or  less  unstable.  The  tenant  who  goes  into 
a  new  community  for  a  year  does  not  usually  align  himself  with  a 
church  unless  he  is  a  man  of  very  positive  religious  convictions. 
Neither  does  the  church  look  upon  the  tenant  as  anything  more 
than  a  pilgrim  and  a  stranger,  and  hence  it  is  apt  to  think  it  not 
worth  while  to  gather  him  into  the  fold. 

Another  influence  is  powerfully  effective.  Members  of 
churches  who  bought  land,  especially  in  the  corn  belt,  at  from 
$25  to  $50  an  acre  thirty  years  ago,  could  not  resist  the  tempta- 
tion to  harvest  the  unearned  increment  and  invest  it  in  the  newer 
lands  of  the  spring  wheat  belt,  or  the  plains,  or  the  Northwest. 
They  moved  to  the  new  country,  taking  their  families  with  them. 
This  has  decreased  the  financial  ability  of  the  congregation  of 
the  country  church,  has  reduced  the  salary  of  the  minister  to  the 
starvation  point,  or  has  perhaps  compelled  the  congregation  to 
have  preaching  for  but  one-half  or  one-third  of  the  time,  and  in 
certain  sections,  for  only  one-fourth  of  the  time.  This  deprives 
the  community  of  the  pastoral  labor  and  the  example  of  a  Chris- 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  425 

tian  leader  and  his  family ;  and  the  result  is  that  the  church  de- 
clines and  then  dies.  In  fact,  the  churches  in  the  towns  of  the 
corn  belt  are  largely  built  up  by  the  removal  of  members  of 
country  churches  to  the  towns. 

The  farms  are  becoming  larger,  and  the  population  of  the  rural 
community  smaller  and  more  unstable  because  of  tenantry.  The 
population  remaining  is  divided  up  into  various  denominations 
and  sects  through  difference  of  opinion  about  church  government 
and  baptism  and  other  things,  the  inheritance  of  a  past  genera- 
tion. 

There  are  two  remedies  for  this  condition,  one  industrial  and 
the  other  spiritual.  Neither  is  capable  of  instant  application,  but 
each  is  certainly  applicable  in  the  somewhat  distant  future.  The 
first  is  such  a  system  of  leasing  as  will  make  the  tenant  a  reason- 
ably permanent  citizen  in  the  community, — in  other  words,  longer 
leases.  Tenancy  is  not  in  itself  an  evil,  but  uncertainty  of  tenure 
and  short  leases  are  evils  that  vex  humanity.  We  cannot  expect 
to  see  a  prosperous  rural  church  until  the  tenant  can  make  some 
arrangement  with  his  landlord  by  which  he  can  stay  on  the  same 
farm  indefinitely,  take  root  in  the  community,  become  an  active 
member  of  the  church,  and  make  of  his  children  real  members  of 
the  Sunday-school  and  rural  school.  Economic  causes  themselves 
will  force  upon  the  landowner  this  system  of  longer  leases.  The 
constant  decrease  of  soil  fertility  through  the  bad  farming  of 
the  short-lease  tenant  and  the  fact  now  becoming  evident  that  it 
it  more  profitable  to  the  enterprising  farmer  to  rent  land  than 
to  own  it,  must  work  for  the  greater  permanency  of  the  tenant. 
The  first  will  wipe  out  speculation  and  reduce  land  values  in  the 
richer  sections  until  it  will  be  possible  for  the  tenant  by  renting 
land  to  become  the  owner  of  the  land.  This  will  give  us  a  stable 
population  and  greatly  increase  the  efficiency  of  the  rural  church. 

The  second  remedy  is  in  the  change  of  view  of  the  Christian 
ideal.  We  must  now  get  back  to  the  original  Christian  idea :  that 
salvation  is  for  every  man  and  for  every  part  of  the  man — body, 
soul,  and  spirit;  that  it  involves  loving  ''thy  neighbor  as  thy- 
self, ' '  and  cooperation  in  every  good  work  instead  of  competition. 
A  church  united  on  the  fundamentals,  and  with  a  reasonably  per- 
manent tenure  of  lands  by  ownership  or  lease,  will  enable  us  in 
time  to  build  up  a  civilization  on  the  prairies,  and  the  cleared 


426  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

timber  lands  more  satisfying  than  that  which  can  be  found  any- 
where else  on  earth. 


RURAL  ECONOMY  AS  A  FACTOR  IN  THE 

SUCCESS  OF  THE  CHURCH1 

THOMAS    N.    CARVER 

IT  may  be  laid  down  as  a  general  law  of  rural  economy  that 
the  productive  land  in  any  farming  community  will  tend  to  pass 
more  and  more  into  the  hands  of  those  who  can  cultivate  it  most 
efficiently, — that  is,  into  the  hands  of  the  most  efficient  farmers, — 
unless  it  is  prevented  from  doing  so  by  some  kind  of  military 
force  exercised  by  an  aristocratic  ruling  class.  In  a  democratic 
country,  like  the  United  States,  where  there  are  so  few  impedi- 
ments in  the  way  of  the  free  transfer  of  land,  we  need  look  for 
nothing  else.  The  men  who  can  make  the  land  produce  the  most 
will  be  able  to  pay  the  most  for  it,  and  in  the  end  they  will  get  it 
and  hold  it.  This  looks  simple  enough,  no  doubt,  and  may  not  at 
first  seem  to  signify  much,  but  it  is  weighted  with  consequences 
of  the  most  stupendous  and  far-reaching  character, — conse- 
quences which  it  would  be  suicidal  for  the  church  to  ignore. 

It  means  simply  and  literally  that  the  rural  districts  are  never 
to  be  thoroughly  Christianized  until  Christians  become,  as  a  rule, 
better  farmers  than  non-Christians.  If  it  should  happen  that 
Christians  should  become  really  better  farmers  than  non-Chris- 
tians, the  land  will  pass  more  and  more  into  the  possession  of 
Christians,  and  this  will  become  a  Christian  country,  at  least  so 
far  as  the  rural  districts  are  concerned.  The  first  result  would 
probably  be  to  paganize  the  cities,  since  the  non-Christians  dis- 
placed from  the  rural  districts  by  their  superior  competitors 
would  take  refuge  in  the  towns.  But  since  nature  has  a  way  of 
exterminating  town  populations  in  three  or  four  generations,  and 
the  towns  have  therefore  to  be  continuously  recruited  from  the 
country,  the  Christianizing  of  the  rural  districts  would  eventually 
mean  the  Christianizing  of  the  towns  also.  But,  vice  versa,  if 
non-Christians  should  become  the  better  farmers,  by  reason  of 

i  Adapted  from  American  Unitarian  Association,  Social  Service  Bul- 
letin No.  8.,  25  Beacon  St.,  Boston. 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  427 

some  false  philosophy  or  supercilious  attitude  toward  material 
wealth  and  economic  achievement  on  the  part  of  the  church,  then 
this  would  eventually  become  a  non-Christian  country,  for  the 
same  reason. 

But  if,  as  a  third  possibility,  there  should  be  no  perceptible 
difference  between  Christians  and  non-Christians  as  to  their 
knowledge  and  adaptability,  or  as  to  their  general  fitness  to  sur- 
vive and  possess  the  earth, — fitness,  that  is,  as  determined  by 
nature's  standard  rather  than  by  some  artificial  standard  of  our 
own  devising, — the  result  would  be  that  Christians  would  remain 
indefinitely  a  mere  sect  in  the  midst  of  a  non-Christian  or  a  non- 
descript population.  The  only  way  of  avoiding  this  rather  un- 
satisfactory situation  would  be  to  force  the  whole  population  into 
a  nominal  Christianity  by  military  force.  But,  assuming  that 
physical  force  is  not  to  be  used,  and  that  the  ordinary  economic 
forces  are  to  operate  undisturbed  by  such  violent  means,  then  the 
contention  will  hold.  This  is  what  is  likely  to  happen  if  certain 
religious  leaders  should  succeed  in  identifying  Christianity  with 
millinery,  or  with  abstract  formulae  respecting  the  visible  world, 
or  with  mere  loyalty  to  an  organization,  rather  than  with  rational 
conduct.  By  rational  conduct  is  meant  that  kind  of  conduct 
which  conserves  human  energy  and  enables  men  to  fulfill  their 
mission  of  subduing  the  earth  and  ruling  over  it,  which  enables 
them  to  survive  in  the  struggle  with  nature,  which  is  the  essence 
of  all  genuine  morality. 

But  why  confine  these  observations  to  agriculture  and  rural 
economy?  Are  not  the  conditions  of  economic  success  the  same 
in  the  city  as  in  the  country?  And  must  not  religion  prevail 
over  irreligion  in  the  city  as  well  as  in  the  country,  provided 
religion  secures  a  greater  conservation  of  human  energy  than 
irreligion  secures  ?  In  a  certain  very  broad  sense,  or  in  the  long 
run — with  a  great  deal  of  emphasis  upon  the  word  "long" — that 
is  probably  true.  But  the  conditions  of  individual  economic  suc- 
cess in  cities  are  so  complex,  there  are  so  many  opportunities  .  .  . 

"for  ways  that  are  dark 
And  for  tricks  that  are  vain" 

as  to  obscure,  if  not  to  obliterate  entirely,  the  working  of  this 
law. 


428  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

In  agriculture  one  must  wrest  a  living  from  nature,  and  nature 
cannot  be  tricked  or  deluded.  But  a  large  element  of  city  popu- 
lations,— and  generally  they  are  the  dominant  element, — get  their 
living  out  of  other  people;  and  people  are.  easily  deceived.  In- 
stead of  laboring  to  make  two  blades  of  grass  to  grow  where  one 
had  grown  before,  their  business  is  to  make  two  dollars  emerge 
from  other  people's  pockets  where  one  had  emerged  before. 
Neither  impudence,  nor  a  smooth  tongue,  nor  a  distinguished 
manner,  nor  lurid  rhetoric,  ever  yet  made  an  acre  of  land  to  yield 
a  larger  crop  of  grain ;  but  they  have  frequently  made  an  office, 
a  sanctum,  a  platform,  and  even  a  pulpit  yield  a  larger  crop  of 
dollars.  They  who  get  their  living  out  of  other  people  must,  of 
necessity,  interest  those  other  people,  and  men  are  so  constituted 
that  queer  and  abnormal  things  are  more  interesting  to  them  than 
the  usual  and  the  normal.  They  will  pay  money  for  the  privilege 
of  seeing  a  two-headed  calf,  when  a  normal  calf  would  not  interest 
them  at  all.  The  dime  museum  freak  makes  money  by  showing 
to  our  interested  gaze  his  physical  abnormalities.  He  is  an  eco- 
nomic success  in  that  he  makes  a  good  living  by  it,  but  it  does  not 
follow  that  he  is  the  type  of  man  who  is  fitted  to  survive  or  that 
religion  ought  to  try  to  produce.  Other  men,  going  under  the 
names  of  artists,  novelists,  or  dramatists,  of  certain  nameless 
schools,  make  very  good  livings  by  revealing  to  interested  minds 
their  mental  and  moral  abnormalities.  They,  like  the  dime 
museum  freaks,  are  economic  successes  in  that  they  make  good 
livings,  but  it  does  not  follow  that  they  are  the  type  of  man 
fitted  to  survive  or  that  religion  ought  to  try  to  produce.  This 
type  of  economic  success  is  an  urban  rather  than  a  rural  type,  and 
it  flourishes  under  urban  rather  than  rural  conditions.  So  long 
as  it  flourishes  there  is  no  reason  why  religious  men  who  conserve 
their  energies  for  productive  service  should  succeed  in  crowding 
them  out  of  existence.  The  only  chance  of  attaining  that  end 
will  be  for  religion  to  give  people  a  saner  appreciation  of  things, 
teach  them  to  be  more  interested  in  normal  calves  than  in  two- 
headed  calves,  in  normal  men  than  in  dime  museum  freaks,  in 
sane  writers  than  in  certain  degenerate  types  now  holding  the 
attention  of  the  gaping  crowd.  If  this  can  be  brought  about, 
then  it  will  result  that  the  religious  type  of  man,  even  in  cities, 
will  more  and  more  prevail  over  the  irreligious,  provided  the 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  429 

religion  itself  is  worth  preserving, — that  is,  provided  it  becomes 
a  positive  factor  in  the  conservation  of  human  energy. 

As  has  already  been  suggested,  there  is  a  great  deal  more  in- 
volved in  making  a  good  farmer  than  in  the  teaching  of  scien- 
tific agriculture.  Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd  has  done  well  to  empha- 
size the  importance  of  moral  qualities  as  compared  with  intel- 
lectual achievements.  In  the  first  place,  intellectual  achieve- 
ments, or  their  results,  can  only  be  utilized  where  there  is  a  sane 
and  wholesome  morality  as  a  basis.  In  the  second  place,  the 
results  of  intellectual  achievement  of  one  race  or  one  man  may 
be  borrowed  freely  by  the  rest  of  the  world,  provided  the  rest 
of  the  world  have  the  moral  qualities  which  will  enable  them  to 
profit  by  them;  whereas  moral  qualities  can  not  be  borrowed 
from  one  race  by  another.  Japan,  for  example,  could  easily 
borrow  from  European  nations  the  art  of  modern  warfare,  to- 
gether with  its  instruments  of  destruction ;  but  it  did  not  borrow, 
and  could  not  borrow,  that  splendid  courage  and  discipline  which 
enabled  her  to  utilize  so  efficiently  the  inventions  which  she  bor- 
rowed. So,  one  nation  can  easily  borrow  farm  machinery  and 
modern  methods  of  agriculture,  but  it  cannot  borrow  the  moral 
qualities  which  will  enable  it  to  profit  by  them.  Saying  nothing 
of  mental  alertness  and  willingness  to  learn,  which  might  be 
classed  as  mental  rather  than  moral,  it  could  not  borrow  that 
patient  spirit  of  toil,  nor  that  sturdy  self-reliance,  nor  that  fore- 
thought which  sacrifices  present  enjoyment  to  future  profit,  nor 
can  it  borrow  that  spirit  of  mutual  helpfulness  which  is  so  essen- 
tial to  any  effective  rural  work.  Again,  a  nation  cannot  easily 
borrow  a  sane  and  sober  reason,  a  willingness  to  trust  to  its  own 
care  in  preparing  the  soil  rather  than  to  the  blessing  of  the  priest 
upon  the  fields,  nor  can  it  borrow  a  general  spirit  of  enterprise 
which  ventures  out  upon  plans  and  projects  which  approve  them- 
selves to  the  reason.  And,  finally,  it  cannot  borrow  that  love 
for  the  soil,  and  the  great  outdoors  and  the  growing  crops,  and 
the  domestic  animals  which  marks  every  successful  rural  people. 
These  things  have  to  be  developed  in  the  soil,  to  be  bred  into  the 
bone  and  fiber  of  the  people ;  and  they  are  the  first  requisites  for 
good  farming.  After  them  come  scientific  knowledge.  In  the 
development  of  such  moral  qualities  as  these  the  church  has  been, 
and  may  become  again,  the  most  effective  agency. 


430  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

It  is  said  that  the  great  problem  of  the  country  church  is  that 
of  an  adequate  support  of  the  ministry.  But  how  can  the  minis- 
try be  adequately  supported?  One  obvious  answer  is  to  reduce 
the  number  of  churches.  This  is  a  good  answer,  perhaps  that  is 
the  easiest  way ;  but  it  is  the  second  best  way.  Another  way  is  to 
build  up  the  community  in  order  that  it  may  furnish  adequate 
membership  and  adequate  support  for  all  the  churches.  This 
may  be  a  harder  way,  but  where  it  is  not  impossible,  it  is  the  best. 

Of  course  there  should  be  continued  emphasis,  in  the  teachings 
of  the  church  and  the  pulpit,  upon  the  plain  economic  virtues  of 
industry,  sobriety,  thrift,  practical,  scientific  knowledge,  and 
mutual  helpfulness ;  but  much  more  emhasis  than  hitherto  should 
be  placed  on  the  last  two.  Practical,  scientific  knowledge  of  agri- 
culture, and  mutual  helpfulness  in  the  promotion  of  the  welfare 
of  the  parish  are  absolutely  essential,  and  unless  the  churches 
can  help  in  this  direction  they  will  remain  poor  and  inadequately 
supported.  For  those  who  think  that  the  church  should  hold 
itself  above  the  work  of  preaching  the  kind  of  conduct  which  pays, 
or  the  kind  of  life  which  succeeds,  the  economic  law  stated  above, 
is  the  strongest  argument. 

Organized  efforts  in  the  churches  for  the  study  of  parish 
economy,  for  gaining  more  and  more  scientific  knowledge  of  agri- 
culture, for  the  practical  kind  of  Christian  brotherhood  which 
shows  itself  in  the  form  of  mutual  helpfulness  and  cooperation, 
in  the  form  of  decreasing  jealousy  and  suspicion,  in  the  form  of 
greater  public  spirit,  greater  alertness  for  opportunities  for  pro- 
moting the  public  good  and  building  up  the  parish  and  the  com- 
munity, in  helping  young  men  and  young  women  to  get  started  in 
productive  work  and  in  home  building,  in  helping  the  children  to 
get  the  kind  of  training  which  will  enable  them  to  make  a  better 
living  in  the  parish, — efforts  of  this  kind  will  eventually  result 
in  better  support  for  the  churches  themselves,  because  the  com- 
munity will  then  be  able  to  support  the  church  more  liberally; 
and,  what  is  more  important,  it  will  then  see  that  the  church  is 
worth  supporting. 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  431 

THE  CHURCH  SITUATION  IN  OHIO  x 

C.    O.    GILL 

THE  rural  church  survey  of  Ohio  now  complete  is  the  first 
church  survey  covering  an  entire  state.  The  state  contains  in 
its  area  of  40,000  square  miles  some  1,388  townships.  Reports 
are  at  hand  from  every  one  of  these.  If  we  exclude  the  town- 
ships in  which  the  population  is  urban,  those  in  which  there  are 
villages  of  more  than  2,500  inhabitants  and  those  in  which  are 
parts  of  large  town  or  city  parishes,  there  are  in  the  state  about 
1,200  townships  which  may  be  classed  as  rural.  In  these  town- 
ships there  are  more  than  6,000  rural  churches  and  more  than  a 
million  and  three  quarters  persons.  In  each  there  is  on  an  aver- 
age a  population  of  1,470,  while  there  are  five  churches,  a  church 
to  every  286  persons. 

It  must  not  be  inferrred,  however,  that  there  is  an  even  distri- 
bution of  the  churches.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  many  districts, 
there  are  not  enough  of  them.  How  excessive  the  overchurching 
is  in  some  regions  may  be  well  illustrated  by  the  condition  in 
Morgan  County.  Meigsville  Township  with  a  population  of  846 
persons  has  nine  churches  or  one  church  to  94  persons.  Union, 
another  township  in  this  county  with  a  population  of  1,048  per- 
sons, also  has  nine  churches.  Neither  township  has  a  resident 
pastor.  This  is  true  of  seven  townships  in  the  county.  In  these 
seven  townships  there  are  41  churches  or  one  church  to  142 
persons. 

The  significance  of  the  excessive  number  of  churches  can  only 
be  appreciated  by  coming  into  close  contact  with  the  communities 
themselves.  Very  rarely  have  I  visited  an  overchurched  com- 
munity in  the  country  without  finding  a  condition  of  harmful 
competition  often  resulting  in  an  anemic  condition  of  the  religious 
institutions.  In  most  of  the  communities  several  churches  are 
trying  to  do  what  one  church,  if  left  to  itself,  could  do  far  more 
effectively.  Under  present  conditions  the  churches  commonly 
constitute  the  greatest  obstacle  to  progress  they  themselves  have 

i  Adapted  from  a  preliminary  report  of  a  state  wide  survey  made  by  the 
Commission  on  Church  and  Country  Life  of  the  Federal  Council  of  Churches 
of  Christ  in  America  in  cooperation  with  the  Ohio  Rural  Life  Assn.  Pub. 
Missionary  Edu.  Movement  of  the  U.  S.  and  Canada,  N.  Y. 


432  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

to  encounter.  According  to  data  gathered  by  the  Ohio  Rural 
Life  Survey,  the  churches,  as  a  rule,  whose  membership  is  less 
than  100  do  not  prosper,  while  the  smaller  the  membership  the 
greater  the  proportion  of  the  churches  which  are  dying;  yet  in 
rural  Ohio  it  appears  that  more  than  4,000  churches  have  a  mem- 
bership of  100  or  less,  more  than  3,000  a  membership  of  75  or  less, 
more  than  2,000  a  membership  of  50  or  less. 

Membership  must  not  be  confused  with  attendance.  I  have 
personally  visited  a  considerable  number  of  churches  on  Sundays, 
have  counted  their  congregations  and  have  compared  the  attend- 
ance with  the  membership.  In  this  State  I  have,  in  no  case,  found 
the  attendance  as  large  as  the  membership.  In  this  respect  the 
best  record  in  any  church  I  have  attended  is  that  of  a  church 
whose  membership  is  sixty  and  the  attendance  forty.  In  one 
church  the  membership  was  125,  the  attendance  34;  in  another 
church  the  membership  300,  the  attendance  136. 

One  of  the  striking  facts  brought  to  light  through  the  survey 
is  the  lack  of  an  adequate  number  of  resident  ministers.  "While 
a  reasonable  degree  of  interchurch  cooperation  should  result  in 
the  maintenance  of  a  resident  pastor  in  nearly  every  inhabited 
township,  at  the  present  time  the  church  falls  far  short  of  real- 
izing this  possibility.  In  fact  nearly  4,000  or  about  two-thirds 
of  the  churches  in  rural  Ohio  are  without  resident  ministers. 
In  26  per  cent,  of  the  townships  no  church  has  a  resident  pastor. 

More  than  5,000  of  the  churches  are  without  the  undivided 
service  of  a  minister.  More  than  2,200  churches  have  only  one- 
fourth  of  a  minister's  service  or  less,  more  than  3,300  have  only 
one-third  of  a  minister's  service  or  less,  while  more  than  700  have 
no  part  of  a  minister's  service.  These  figures  do  not  take  into 
consideration  the  fact  that  a  considerable  number  of  the  ministers 
have  other  occupations  than  the  ministry.  I  personally  have  met 
several  ministers  who  have  secular  occupations  and  yet  are  each 
serving  two  or  more  country  churches. 

One  of  the  most  striking  features  of  the  situation  is  the  fact 
that  whereas  there  are  superintendents  who  are  responsible  for 
the  supervision  of  churches  of  their  own  denominations,  there  is 
no  superintendent,  or  official,  who  accepts  responsibility  for  the 
general  moral  and  spiritual  conditions  in  any  considerable  area. 
However  bad  condidtions  in  a  county  or  region  may  be  there  is  no 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  433 

organization  or  person  whose  business  it  is  to  know  about  it. 
Consequently  decadence  and  degeneration  may  go  on  in  an  exten- 
sive territory  without  any  responsible  body  or  responsible  person 
becoming  aware  of  it.  The  defectiveness  of  the  organization  of 
the  church,  as  a  whole,  therefore,  demands  our  serious  considera- 
tion and  the  application  of  a  remedy.  On  the  other  hand  the 
promise  in  a  movement  such  as  is  now  on  foot  under  the  auspices 
of  the  Ohio  Rural  Life  Association  and  its  Committee  on  Inter- 
church  Cooperation  is  a  cause  for  congratulation.  It  may  be  pre- 
sumed that  in  some  areas  conditions  existing  to-day  would  never 
have  come  to  pass  had  the  church,  itself,  as  a  whole,  been  aware 
of  what  was  going  on. 

Areas  of  the  most  pronounced  ecclesiastical  decline  and  moral 
degeneration  are  found  in  some  of  the  eastern,  southeastern  and 
southern  counties.  A  striking  illustration  of  the  failure  of  our 
present  church  organization  appears  in  one  of  these  southern 
counties.  The  aim  of  the  typical  and  most  influential  religious 
leaders  in  this  county  is  to  stir  up  an  emotional  excitement  with- 
out regard  to  its  effect  upon  character.  These  religious  leaders 
apparently  are  not  conscious  of  an  ethical  end.  By  the  use  of 
music  well  adapted  to  the  end  sought,  by  adaptation  of  the  voice, 
sometimes  even  by  the  use  of  the  hypnotic  eye  and  suggestion  of 
emotional  experience  to  be  expected,  an  excitement  is  produced 
which  is  accepted  as  a  substitute  for  the  more  worthy  aims  of 
religion.  They  report  additions  to  the  membership  of  the 
churches  and  even  the  organization  and  building  of  churches. 
The  so-called  evangelist  at  the  end  of  a  period  of  protracted  meet- 
ings leaves  the  locality  having  accomplished  no  good  thing.  He 
returns  period  after  period,  season  after  season,  year  after  year 
and  the  same  activities  are  repeated.  This  has  displaced  a  more 
wholesome  type  of  church  life  with  disastrous  results  to  the  com- 
munity. For  at  least  fifteen  years  this  type  of  religion  has  been 
gaming  in  popular  favor,  while  it  is  displacing  other  forms  of 
religious  activities. 

In  the  year  1883  there  were  96  churches  in  this  county.  In  the 
following  thirty  years  there  were  1,500  religious  revivals  or  on  an 
average  fifty  each  year.  During  that  period  there  was  a  decline 
of  no  less  than  five  hundred  in  the  membership  of  the  churches, 
while  thirty-four  churches  were  abandoned;  the  production  of 


434  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

corn  declined  from  thirty-four  to  twenty-eight  bushels  to  the 
acre;  a  larger  proportion  of  the  population  are  afflicted  with 
tuberculosis  than  in  any  similar  area  in  the  United  States ;  a 
trained  hygienic  expert  who  has  made  careful  investigations  de- 
clares that  the  prevalence  both  of  infectious  disease  and  feeble- 
mindedness is  extreme;  politics  are  corrupt,  the  selling  of  votes 
common,  petty  crimes  abound,  the  schools  are  badly  managed  and 
poorly  attended  while  there  is  much  illiteracy. 

The  itinerant  evangelists  who  come  into  the  county  each  year 
are  the  chief  religious  leaders.  The  ministers  who  live  in  the 
county  usually  remain  but  a  year.  They  have  several  churches 
each  and  direct  their  efforts  to  increasing  the  membership  of  the 
particular  churches  they  serve.  They  have  no  intimate  relation 
with  the  people  and  exert  very  little  influence  upon  them.  One 
minister  serves  no  less  than  ten  churches. 

The  type  of  religion  here  described  is  strongly  intrenched  in 
parts  of  many  counties  while  its  influence  through  the  migration 
of  farm  laborers  is  seriously  affecting  the  religious  and  social  life 
in  some  of  the  more  prosperous  and  progressive  counties.  In  one 
of  these  in  an  area  of  sixteen  miles  long  and  from  seven  to  eleven 
miles  wide  there  are  three  abandoned  but  no  living  churches. 
One  of  the  causes  of  this  condition  is  the  fact  that  the  farm 
laborers,  imported  by  the  owners  of  large  tracts  of  land,  have 
never  been  made  familiar  with  a  normal  type  of  religion.  In- 
vestigation has  disclosed  the  fact  that  they  come  from  the  regions 
where  the  excessively  emotional  type  of  religion  prevails. 

In  no  less  than  nine  counties  conditions  such  as  we  have  de- 
scribed may  be  found  in  localities.  In  two  of  the  counties  homi- 
cides are  common  and  frequently  go  unpunished.  In  Vinton 
County  there  are  two  Mormon  Churches.  It  has  been  truly  said 
that  in  this  southeastern  section  of  the  State  our  civilization  is 
not  being  conserved. 

A  fairly  good  community,  typical  of  a  considerable  area,  may 
be  found  in  a  certain  township  in  the  northwestern  section  of  the 
state.  In  this  township  one-half  of  the  inhabitants  are  descend- 
ants of  the  early  settlers  who  came  from  New  England.  The  tra- 
ditions of  these  people  are  good,  but  they  are  too  conservative 
to  encourage  progress  in  agriculture.  The  other  half  of  the 
population  consists  of  farmers  coming  mostly  from  the  western 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  435 

part  of  the  state  or  from  still  farther  west.  These  are  pro- 
gressive, but  in  applying  the  methods  of  farming  to  which  they 
have  been  accustomed  under  different  conditions  they  sometimes 
fail.  They  have  a  fairly  good  centralized  school  and  desire  to 
have  good  educational  facilities.  Little  is  done  to  encourage  the 
social  life  of  the  community,  nothing  for  the  promotion  of  scien- 
tific agriculture  or  to  promote  the  general  welfare  of  the  com- 
munity outside  of  what  little  is  done  in  the  school.  Formerly  it 
was  the  custom  to  have  at  least  one  resident  pastor  in  the  com- 
munity, but  for  ten  years  or  more  they  have  had  none.  There 
are  three  churches,  the  Methodist  Episcopal  with  forty-eight,  the 
Disciples  with  forty-three  families,  represented  in  their  member- 
ship, and  a  Baptist  Church  with  a  membership  of  only  three,  but 
holding  a  Sunday  School  of  considerable  size.  In  this  township 
there  are  forty  vacant  houses.  Large  numbers  of  the  farms  are 
very  imperfectly  cultivated,  yet  it  is  said  by  an  agricultural  ex- 
pert that  drainage  and  scientific  farming  will  greatly  add  to  the 
production  and  the  wealth  of  the  township. 


THE  GENOA  PARISH,  WALWORTH  COUNTY  * 

REV.    A.    PH.    KREMER 

THERE  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  fact  that  a  closer  union  of  the 
country  population  will  not  only  make  life  in  the  country  more 
attractive,  but  will  also  stimulate  mental  development  and  pro- 
mote Christian  charity. 

From  the  standpoint  of  mental  and  moral  advancement,  the 
country  church  is  the  most  prominent  factor  in  uniting  people 
whose  homes  arc  often  miles  apart.  By  reuniting  them,  it  brings 
them  into  closer  contact  with  one  another,  thereby  creating  social 
life  of  a  high  standard  and  fostering  the  social  intercourse  so 
necessary  to  the  average  man. 

Let  me  say  now  that  I  consider  it  a  great  misfortune  that 
the  members  of  a  parish  should  be  brought  together  only  for  the 
purpose  of  raising  money  for  church  purposes.  There  should  be 
gatherings  whose  object  is  not  replenishing  the  church  treasury. 

i  Adapted  from  Third  Annual  TCeport  of  the  Wisconsin  Country  Life 
Conference,  pp.  46-7,  Univ.  of  Wis.,  Madison,  Jan.,  1913. 


436  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  parish  has  five  distinct  means  of  bringing  people  together. 
The  first  of  these  is  the  parish  school.  Children  living  in  various 
school  districts  meet  daily  in  the  school-room  and  thereby  natu- 
rally extend  the  horizon  of  their  friendships  along  broader  lines. 
All  school  festivals  bring  in  the  parents  of  these  children,  thus 
one  common  interest  unites  both  parents  and  children. 

After  the  school  years  are  over  the  boys  and  girls  join  the 
junior  divisions  of  the  young  people's  societies.  Once  a  month 
they  hold  regular  meetings,  listen  to  conferences  adapted  to  their 
conditions  of  life,  arrange  little  social  affairs,  and,  when  old 
enough,  are  admitted  into  the  young  men's  or  young  women's 
sodalities. 

The  church  is  tlie  real  social  center  for  these  young  people. 
They  furnish  the  material  for  the  choir  and  the  dramatic  club. 
Once  a  month  they  meet  for  the  purpose  of  mental  and  spiritual 
culture ;  the}^  have  a  circulating  library  of  choice  books.  Every 
Sunday  after  Mass  the  librarian  is  at  hand  to  give  out  books, 
and  as  the  young  people  meet  here  they  naturally  speak  of  the 
merits  or  shortcomings  of  the  books  they  have  read. 

Cinch  parties  and  spreads  are  arranged  at  times,  when  the 
young  people — practically  all  of  them — meet  and  spend  an  aft- 
ernoon or  evening  in  the  most  pleasant  manner,  without  any  other 
thought  than  that  of  giving  and  enjoying  what  they  call  a  "  jolly 
good  time. ' ' 

The  married  people  meet  once  a  month  for  moral  improvement, 
and,  at  odd  times  during  the  year,  for  social  pleasure.  I  remem- 
ber one  occasion  on  which  the  married  ladies  were  the  guests,  and 
the  married  men  the  hosts.  It  would  have  done  your  hearts  good 
to  have  seen  these  sedate  men,  decked  in  the  uniforms  of  waiters 
and  cooks,  receive  their  guests,  seat  them,  and  wait  on  them  in 
the  most  solemn  manner. 

Once  a  year  a  picnic  is  held ;  the  whole  congregation,  neighbors 
and  friends  meet  in  the  forenoon  and  spend  the  whole  day  in  any 
way  they  choose.  The  men  sit  together,  smoke,  and  talk  politics 
and  farming ;  the  married  women  sit  in  groups  with  their  babies 
playing  around  them,  exchanging  views  on  every  topic.  The 
young  people  play  ball,  tennis,  bean  bag,  or  any  other  game  their 
fancy  suggests,  till  the  declining  day  reminds  them  of  the  races. 
Then  old  and  young  assemble  to  witness  or  to  take  part  in  the 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  437 

various  tests  of  strength,  swiftness,  and  athletic  ability.  No 
chances  are  sold,  no  money  demanded.  Every  one  spends  what 
he  wishes  and  feels  sure  that  he  gets  full  value  for  the  money 
he  pays. 

One  word  must  be  said  about  the  buildings.  The  school  has 
two  adjoining  rooms  separated  by  a  movable  partition.  The 
larger  room  may  readily  be  used  as  an  auditorium,  as  a  movable 
stage  can  be  erected  in  the  smaller  room,  the  partition  removed, 
the  school  desks  taken  to  the  basement  of  the  school  and  chairs 
put  in  their  places.  Thus  the  school  is  changed  into  an  audi- 
torium with  a  stage  complete  in  all  its  appointments.  After  the 
performance  is  over,  the  stage  is  taken  down  and  stored  away,  and 
the  desks  replaced,  the  whole  not  requiring  more  than  two  or 
three  hours  of  work. 

The  basement  of  the  church  has  a  furnace  and  fuel  room,  a 
large  kitchen  furnished  with  everything  needed  in  the  line  of 
cooking  utensils  and  desks,  a  large  dining-room  with  large  dining 
tables  and  three  hundred  chairs.  The  dining-room  and  the 
kitchen  are  never  used  for  any  other  purpose,  and  are  therefore 
always  in  readiness. 


RURAL  WORK  OF  THE  YOUNG  MEN'S  CHRISTIAN 
ASSOCIATION  * 

ALBERT   E.   ROBERTS  AND   HENRY   ISRAEL 

THE  county  work,  or  rural  department  of  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  seeks  to  unite  in  a -town,  village,  rural  com- 
munity, or  in  the  open  country  the  vital  forces  of  young  man- 
hood for  self-improvement,  physically,  socially,  mentally,  and 
spiritually,  and  to  give  expression  to  these  resources  in  com- 
munity life  for  the  betterment  of  others. 

It  considers  its  legitimate  field  to  include  all  communities  that 
are  too  small  to  maintain  the  city  type  of  Young  Men 's  Christian 
Association  work,  generally  conceded  to  include  towns  of  four 
thousand  and  under.  Experience  has  proved  that  its  best  work 
is  done,  however,  in  communities  in  which  the  rural  environment 

i  Adapted  from  Annals  of  the  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social 
Science,  March,  1012,  pp.  140-0. 


438  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

dominates  the  community  ideals.  It  therefore  is  a  movement 
which  must  be  determined  from  the  standpoint  of  qualitative 
rather  than  quantitative  values.  There  are  45,000  such  com- 
munities in  the  United  States  and  Canada  with  a  combined  popu- 
lation of  over  12,000,000,  thus  including  over  60  per  cent,  of  the 
boyhood  and  young  manhood  in  this  field.  There  are  2,000  coun- 
ties considered  organizable  in  the  United  States  and  500  in 
Canada  on  the  present  basis  of  organization  and  type  of  work. 

The  term  "county  work"  is  applied  to  this  movement  because 
the  county  already  affords  a  ready  geographical  unit  for  con- 
structive work.  Counties  have  distinctive  traditions  of  their  own 
social  elements  and  existing  organizations  of  a  county-wide  char- 
acter. As  the  result  of  repeated  failures  in  individual  communi- 
ties apart  from  other  communities,  a  county-wide  organization 
commanding  the  combined  resources  of  men  and  money  within 
the  county,  made  possible  in  community  life  that  which  could 
not  have  been  accomplished  independently. 

There  are  two  factors  that  enter  into  this  plan  so  essential  to 
success — volunteer  effort  and  expert  supervision.  The  volun- 
tary organization,  4he  county  committee,  consisting  of  from  fif- 
teen to  twenty  prominent  business  and  professional  men  and  suc- 
cessful farmers,  constitute  the  administrative  unit  and  clearing 
house  for  policies  and  programs  for  the  country-wide  activities  as 
well  as  for  individual  communities.  These  county  committeemen 
are  selected  with  great  care,  primarily  meeting  one  of  two  quali- 
fications :  to  be  able  to  command  resources  of  their  own  to  promote 
this  work  for  a  period  of  years,  or  to  possess  such  influence  as  to 
command  the  resources  of  others,  both  in  time  and  money.  They 
all  must  stand  for  the  best  things  in  community  life,  be  vitally 
related  to  the  church,  to  the  school  and  other  agencies  that  make 
for  community  progress.  They  constitute  a  voluntary  body  not 
unlike  the  faculty  of  a  university  at  one  time,  of  the  health  board 
of  the  county  in  another  instance,  as  the  clearing  house  for  a 
religious  campaign  at  another  time,  as  a  voluntary  body  of  com- 
missioners to  advance  the  specific  interests  of  a  county,  and  in 
no  uncertain  degree  to  measure  out  their  best  judgement  fre- 
quently along  the  lines  of  advancing  the  agricultural  or  economic 
interests.  Therefore,  the  county  committee  assigns  these  various 
aspects  of  its  work  to  sub-committees,  each  of  which  renders  its 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  439 

report  at  the  quarterly  meeting  of  the  county  committee  which 
works  in  close  contact  with  the  employed  secretary  and  trained 
experts.  The  county  committee  is  responsible  for  a  budget  vary- 
ing from  $2,000  to  $6,000  annually  secured  by  voluntary  contri- 
butions, which  enables  it  to  employ  a  secretary  who  is  a  trained 
expert  as  their  executive  officer.  Thus  the  work  is  correlated  and 
coordinated  and  a  central  clearing  house  is  established  through 
which  any  community  and  every  community  may  find  help  and 
counsel  in  promoting  its  internal  welfare.  In  many  instances 
the  county  committee  has  thus  saved  a  community  from  expensive 
and  painful  experiences  that  have  been  previously  proven  im- 
practicable. 

The  County  Secretary.  He  is  usually  the  fittest  type  of  the 
college  man,  often  not  only  a  college  graduate,  but  also  with  some 
special  training.  He  is  a  man  who  likes  country  life  and  be- 
lieves in  the  country  and  has  great  faith  in  the  immediate  future 
of  the  rural  districts.  He  is  usually  a  man  of  large  capacity  for 
leadership,  with  a  broad  knowledge  of  human  nature  and  a  fine 
friendliness  as  well  as  an  earnest  Christian  purpose  and  a  great 
longing  to  help  country  boys  and  young  men  to  well  developed 
Christian  manhood.  He  is  in  a  real  sense  a  community  builder. 
As  he  is  employed  by  a  voluntary  organization,  his  services  and 
his  largest  contribution  to  a  county  will  be  in  reproducing  his 
expert  knowledge  and  experience  in  volunteer  service.  There- 
fore, his  primary  task  is  to  discover,  enlist,  train,  and  utilize 
leadership.  He  is  also  a  servant.  Pastors,  Sunday  School  super- 
intendents and  teachers,  public  school  superintendents  and  day 
school  teachers,  fathers  and  mothers,  granges,  farmers'  clubs  and 
institutes,  women's  clubs  and  many  other  organizations  seek  his 
cooperation  and  advice.  In  the  individual  community  having 
discovered  leaders  and  set  them  at  work,  he  executes  the  plans 
and  policies  adopted  by  the  county  committee  through  volunteer 
leadership.  His  relationship  is  with  the  few  men  who  are  the 
leaders  rather  than  with  the  massses.  In  addition  to  the  county 
secretaries  some  of  the  older  and  larger  counties  are  employing 
assistant  secretaries,  physical  directors,  boys'  work  directors,  etc. 
There  are  now  fifty  such  secretaries  in  forty-nine  counties. 

County  work  is  not  an  attempt  to  build  up  a  new  organization 
in  country  communities.  It  recognizes  as  the  primary  institu- 


440  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tions  of  the  community,  the  home,  the  school,  and  the  church. 
Many  other  supplemental  organizations  are  doing  splendid  work, 
but  the  aforementioned  are  recognized  as  fundamental.  It  is  also 
a  fact  that  though  these  are  the  primary  institutions,  they  are 
in  many  cases  functioning  inadequately,  or  have  ceased  to  per- 
form their  function  entirely.  Again,  in  supplementary  organiza- 
tions which  are  found  in  country  life  many  are  overlapping  and 
even  working  at  cross  purposes.  There  seems  to  be  no  well  de- 
fined or  unified  policy.  Furnishing  a  common  platform  upon 
which  the  various  interests  of  the  people  will  find  expression 
and  where  these  interests  can  come  together  in  a  democratic 
spirit  is  the  unifying  task  of  the  county  work  in  organized  coun- 
ties. It  stands  for  the  elimination  of  waste,  for  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  real  needs  after  surveys  have  been  made,  for  the  as- 
sumption of  specific  tasks  by  specific  individuals  and  communi- 
ties. It  gives  itself  to  the  awakening  of  a  social  consciousness,  a 
getting  together ;  it  seeks  to  supplement  and  not  to  supplant.  If 
it  can  persuade  a  leader  to  supervise  the  plan  and  athletics  of  a 
school,  or  a  farmer  to  give  his  boy  a  man 's  chance,  it  has  made  a 
contribution  to  the  community  life,  and  its  leaders  are  as  well 
satisfied  as  they  would  be  if  a  new  organization  were  formed. 


COUNTY  WORK  OF  THE  YOUNG  WOMEN'S 
CHRISTIAN  ASSOCIATION 1 

JESSIE  FIELD 

JUST  as  country  life  is  at  the  very  foundation  of  our  national 
life  in  many  ways,  so  the  young  womanhood  of  the  country  holds 
a  place  of  strategic  importance,  both  in  the  country,  and  for 
service  to  womankind  everywhere.  The  National  Board  of  the 
Young  Women 's  Christian  Association  with  its  plan  of  service  to 
girls  and  young  women  everywhere,  realizing  this,  and  thinking 
ot  the  many  girls  in  country  communities,  began  about  eight 
years  ago  to  work  definitely  towards  making  all  the  resources  of 
the  Association  available  to  them. 

This  has  been  done  through  work  in  the  development  of  leader- 

- 1  From  a  statement  prepared  at  request  of  editor. 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  441 

ship  for  country  communities  in  student  centers  and  through  or- 
ganized county  Associations.  Voluntary  study  courses  in  Coun- 
try Life  Leadership,  with  the  text  book  "College  Women  and 
Country  Leadership"  as  a  basis,  have  been  taken  by  thousands  of 
college  women,  the  majority  of  whom  have  gone  back  to  lead 
dubs  of  girls  in  their  home  communities  during  the  summer. 
Such  classes  as  these  have,  also,  been  held  in  the  summer  confer- 
ences. These  classes  have  not  only  given  more  knowledge  in 
regard  to  country  conditions  but  have  definitely  enlisted  a  great 
many  strong  young  women  in  active,  sacrificial  service. 

Through  the  organized  County  Young  Women's  Christian 
Associations,  trained  leadership  is  made  available  through  the 
county  secretary  and  the  volunteer  leaders  of  the  county  with 
whom  she  works,  for  the  girls  and  young  women  of  the  county. 
Local  resources  are  made  use  of ;  programs  for  social,  educational, 
physical  and  spiritual  growth  are  planned ;  recreational  features 
are  made  a  constructive  force ;  while  county  Camps,  Conferences, 
and  so  forth,  bring  a  chance  for  a  wider  community  and  more 
friendships  for  the  girls  of  the  county.  Through  cooperation 
with  the  homes,  the  schools  and  the  churches,  the  best  things  are 
made  available  for  the  girls. 

There  are  now  twenty-three  such  organized  counties  in  the 
United  States  and  the  number  is  rapidly  growing.  Seven  field 
secretaries  are  at  work  on  this  special  part  of  the  Association  work 
in  different  parts  of  the  United  States. 


TEN  YEARS'  PROGRESS  IN  COUNTY  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
WORK  IN  MICHIGAN1 

C.    L.    ROWE 

THE  County  Y.  M.  C.  A.  has  evolved  a  policy  that  is  applicable 
to  the  field,  town,  village  and  rural  community.  It  uses  resident 
forces,  makes  its  appeal  on  the  basis  of  service,  cooperates  with 
existing  agencies  and  develops  the  individual  through  group 
service.  A  comparison  of  the  growth  in  the  last  ten  years  is  as 
follows : 

i  Publication  of  Rural  School  Department  of  Western  State  Normal 
School,  Kalamazoo,  Michigan. 


442  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

1905  1916 

Counties  organized 1  16 

Organized   communities 8  159 

Secretaries   employed 1  18 

Money    expended    annually $1,500  $36,000 

Members     170  3,421 

Summer    camps 20  600 

Attended  Boys'  Conferences 40  2,300 

Agricultural    contestants 625 

In    physical    activities 140  6,452 


THE  CALL  OF  THE  COUNTRY  PARISH  x 

KENYON   L.    BUTTERFIELD 

THE  country-side  is  calling,  calling  for  men.  Vexing  problems 
of  labor  and  of  life  disturb  our  minds  in  country  as  in  city.  The 
workers  of  the  land  are  striving  to  make  a  better  use  of  their 
resources  of  soil  and  climate,  and  are  seeking  both  larger  wealth 
and  a  higher  welfare.  The  striving  and  the  seeking  raise  new 
questions  of  great  public  concern.  Social  institutions  have  de- 
veloped to  meet  these  new  issues.  But  the  great  need  of  the  pres- 
ent is  leadership.  Only  men  can  vitalize  institutions.  We  need 
leaders  among  the  farmers  themselves,  we  need  leaders  in  edu- 
cation, leaders  in  organization  and  cooperation.  So  the  country 
church  is  calling  for  men  of  God  to  go  forth  to  war  against  all 
the  powers  of  evil  that  prey  upon  the  hearts  of  the  men  who  live 
upon  the  land,  as  well  as  upon  the  people  in  palace  and  tenement. 

The  country  church  wants  men  of  vision,  who  see  through 
the  incidental,  the  small,  the  transient,  to  the  fundamental,  the 
large,  the  abiding  issues  that  the  countryman  must  face  and 
conquer. 

She  wants  practical  men,  who  seek  the  mountain  top  by  the 
obscure  and  steep  paths  of  daily  toil  and  real  living,  men  who 
can  bring  things  to  pass,  secure  tangible  results. 

She  wants  original  men,  who  can  enter  a  human  field  poorly 
tilled,  much  grown  to  brush,  some  of  it  of  diminished  fertility, 
and  by  new  methods  can  again  secure  a  harvest  that  will  gladden 
the  heart  of  the  great  Husbandman. 

i  "The  Country  Church  and  the  Rural  Problem,"  pp.  131-133.  University 
of  Chicago  Press,  1912. 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  443 

She  wants  aggressive  men,  who  do  not  hesitate  to  break  with 
tradition,  who  fear  God  more  than  prejudice,  who  regard  insti- 
tutions as  but  a  means  to  an  end,  who  grow  frequent  crops  of  new 
ideas  and  dare  to  winnow  them  with  the  flails  of  practical  trial. 

She  wants  trained  men,  who  come  to  their  work  with  knowledge 
and  with  power,  who  have  thought  long  and  deeply  upon  the 
problems  of  rural  life,  who  have  hammered  out  a  plan  for  an 
active  campaign  for  the  rural  church. 

She  wants  men  with  enthusiasms,  whose  energy  can  withstand 
the  frosts  of  sloth,  of  habit,  of  pettiness,  of  envy,  of  back-biting, 
and  whose  spirit  is  not  quenched  by  the  waters  of  adversity,  of 
unrealized  hopes,  of  tottering  schemes. 

She  wants  persistent  men,  who  will  stand  by  their  task  amid 
the  mysterious  calls  from  undiscovered  lands,  the  siren  voices 
of  ambition  and  ease,  the  withering  storms  of  winters  of  dis- 
content. 

She  wants  constructive  men,  who  can  transmute  visions  into 
wood  and  stone,  dreams  into  live  institutions,  hopes  into  fruitage. 

She  wants  heroic  men,  men  who  possess  a  "tart,  cathartic 
virtue,"  men  who  love  adventure  and  difficulty,  men  who  can 
work  alone  with  God  and  suffer  no  sense  of  loneliness. 


SECTARIANISM  * 

THE  growth  of  sectarianism  is  shown  by  the  number  of  de- 
nominations found  in  rural  communities.  The  following  is  taken 
from  a  study  made  under  the  direction  of  Dr.  Warren  H.  Wilson, 
showing  the  number  of  churches  in  six  counties  in  Ohio. 

Denominations  No.  of  Churches 

Apostolic    Holiness 7 

Baptist — 

Missionary  Baptist 47 

Free   Will 14 

Union   5 

Colored    4 

Regular    3 

Primitive   Baptist 1 

Separate  Baptist 1 

i  From  Dept.  Church  and  Country  Life,  Bd.  Home  Missions,  Presbyterian 
Church,  N.  Y. 


444  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Brethren    2 

Brothers  Society  of  America 1 

Catholic    ( Roman ) 10 

Christian   19 

Christian   Order    1 

Christian   Union    15 

Church  of  Christ  in  Christian  Union 2 

Church  of  God    ( Saints ) 4 

Come  Outers 1 

Congregational  11 

Disciples,  Non-Progressive    7 

Emanuel  Mission    1 

Episcopal    1 

Evangelical  Association   3 

Evangelical  Protestant 3 

Friends    3 

Latter  Day  Saints , 4 

Lutheran 7 

Mennonite    2 

Methodist- 
Methodist  Episcopal  175 

Methodist  Protestant   33 

Free  Methodist  6 

Wesleyan  Methodist  2 

German  M.  E 1 

African  M.  E 1 

Nazarenes    1 

Presbyterians — 

Presbyterian  U.  S.  A 36 

United  Presbyterian 5 

United  Brethren — 

United  Brethren,  Liberal 51 

United  Brethren,  Radical    6 

Universalist  .  4 


REPORT  OF  COMMITTEE  ON  COUNTRY  CHURCH 
FUNCTION,  POLICY  AND  PROGRAM 

KENYON  L.  BUTTERFIELD,  Chairman.  Miss  JESSIE 'FIELD. 

CHARLES  O.  GILL.  ALBERT  E.  ROBERTS. 

HENRY  WALLACE. 

YOUR  Committee  began  its  study  on  the  assumption  that  there 
were  three  aspects  of  the  work  of  the  country  church  that  needed 
stating : 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  445 

1.  A  definition  of  the  function  of  the  country  church,  in  order 
to  gain  if  possible  a  clear  notion  of  what  the  fundamental  work 
of  the  church  is,  particularly  in  relation  to  the  work  of  other 
social  institutions. 

2.  An  outline  of  a  general  policy  for  the  country  church  as  a 
whole,  in  trying  to  carry  out  its  function. 

3.  A  suggestive  program,  embodying  many  concrete  plans  and 
suggestions  for  the  work  of  the  local  church,  appropriate  to  the 
carrying  out  of  the  general  policy. 

THE   FUNCTION   OF   THE   COUNTRY   CHURCH 

God's  great  purpose  for  men  is  the  highest  possible  develop- 
ment of  each  personality  and  of  the  human  race  as  a  whole.  It 
is  essential  to  this  growth  that  men  shall  hold  adequate  ideals  of 
character  and  life.  The  Christian  believes  that  these  ideals  must 
spring  from  a  clear  appreciation  of  God's  purpose,  and  from  a 
consuming  desire  to  reproduce  the  spirit  and  life  of  Jesus. 

Therefore,  the  function  of  the  country  church  is  to  create,  to 
maintain,  and  to  enlarge  both  individual  and  community  ideals, 
under  the  inspiration  and  guidance  of  the  Christian  motive  and 
teaching,  and  to  help  rural  people  to  incarnate  these  ideals  in 
personal  and  family  life,  in  industrial  effort,  in  political  develop- 
ment, and  in  all  social  relationships. 

The  church  must  bring  men  to  God,  must  lead  in  the  task  of 
building  God's  Kingdom  on  Earth. 

The  mission  of  the  Christian  church  is  that  of  its  Founder: 
To  teach  the  fatherhood  of  God  and  the  brotherhood  of  man  as 
the  ideal  of  life  for  the  individual,  the  family,  the  community, 
and  the  nation,  and  to  point  out  the  best  way  to  make  the  ideal 
the  actual. 

THE  WORK   OF  THE   COUNTRY   CHURCH 

The  Committee  has  divided  the  work  of  the  country  church  into 
the  following  heads : 

1.  Knowledge. 

2.  Preaching  and  worship. 

3.  Religious  education. 

4.  The  Church  ministering  to  all  the  people. 

5.  The  Church,  the  servant  of  the  community. 


446  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

6.  Cooperation  among  the  churches. 

7.  Division  of  labor. 

8.  Administration  and  finance. 

9.  The  preacher  and  his  helpers. 

10.  The  preacher,  a  community  builder. 

11.  The  country  church  circuit. 

Under  each  one  of  these  heads  there  is : 

1.  A  statement  of  general  policy : 

Intended  to  apply  to  the  church  as  a  whole,  or  to  any  church. 
This  policy  is  expected  to  be  broad  enough  on  the  one  hand  to 
make  the  church  "function,"  and  on  the  other  hand  practical 
enough  to  serve  as  a  guide  for  local  church  work. 

2.  A  program  for  the  local  church  : 

This  is  by  no  means  complete,  but  is  a  list  of  specific  things 
that  might  be  done  by  the  local  church.  Probably  no  one  church 
will  do  all  of  them,  but  every  church  can  do  some  of  them.  Each 
church  should  adapt  its  program  to  its  own  needs  and  conditions, 
but  should  always  test  the  program  in  the  light  of  a  broad  policy. 

3.  Suggestions  and  examples : 

Under  this  head  there  is  given  a  list  of  practical  helps,  either 
indicating  literature  or  mentioning  actual  instances  that  show 
the  practicability  of  many  of  the  items  in  the  suggested  program. 

I.   KNOWLEDGE 

Policy 

a.  Country  church  leaders,  both  preachers  and  laymen,  should 
have  a  clear  view  of  the  fundamental  aspects  of  the  rural  problem, 
and  should  broadly  define  the  relationship  of  the  church  to  that 
problem. 

b.  The  country  church  should  make  a  survey  of  its  field,  to 
discover  neglected  individuals  and  families,  to  ascertain  the  con- 
ditions which  determine  its  work,  and  to  learn  what  movements 
are  entitled  to  its  guidance,  interest,  and  support.     Two  or  more 
churches  serving  the  same  community  should  cooperate  in  such 
a  survey.     The  main  results  should  be  made  public,  but  the  rights 
of  privacy  should  be  duly  guarded. 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  447 

Program  for  the  Local  Church 

a-L  Books,  bulletins,  and  magazines  on  country  life  should  be 
put  into  public  libraries  and  church  libraries. 

(See  lists  furnished  by  Rural  Department  of  Y.  M.  C.  A.) 

2.  Import  lecturers  on  country  life  from  the  agricultural  col- 
leges, church  societies,  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  etc. 

3.  Have  speakers  on  the  subject  of  the  rural  problem,  at  church 
coventions,  conventions  of  young  people's  societies,  etc  . 

4.  Hold  county  or  district  conferences  of  rural  preachers  to 
study  the  rural  problem. 

b-1.  Promote  the  community  survey.  Use  some  good  standard 
survey  such  as  that  furnished  by  the  Federal  Council,  by  the 
Presbyterian  board  (Dr.  Wilson),  by  agricultural  colleges. 

2.  Encourage  self -study  by  the  community. 

3.  Chart  results  in  graphic  form  so  that  material  can  be  pre- 
served, and  also  made  available  for  actual  use. 

II.    PREACHING   AND   WORSHIP 

Policy 

The  country  church  should  foster  private  and  public  worship 
of  God.  Through  its  preaching,  it  should  bring  a  ringing  spir- 
itual message  to  the  community,  and  interpret  the  Gospel  for  the 
uplift  of  motive  and  the  transformation  and  development  of 
character. 

Program 

1.  Preaching  every  Sunday  in  every  field. 

2.  Emphasis  on  congregational  singing. 

3.  Topics  and  texts  with  rural  setting. 

4.  Religious  use  of  special  days,  like  Harvest  Home,  Rural 
Life  Sundays,  Thanksgiving,  Farm  Mother's  Day,  Easter, — with 
reference  to  rural  environment. 

III.    RELIGIOUS   EDUCATION 

Policy 

The  country  church  should  develop  definite  means  of  religious 
education,  both  of  adults  and  of  children,  interpreting  personal 


448  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

and  social  duty  in  terms  of  rural  life,  and  applying  what  is 
learned  in  actual  social  service.  To  this  end,  the  pulpit,  the  home, 
and  the  Sunday  School  should  definitely  cooperate. 

Program 

1.  Graded  Bible  instruction  for  children ;  adapted  to  the  aver- 
age country  Sunday  School. 

2.  Instruction  of  adults  through  consecutive  studies  in  sermonic 
material. 

3.  Mid-week  and  monthly  conferences. 

4.  Rural  Bible  Study. 

IV.   THE   CHURCH   MINISTERING   TO  ALL  THE  PEOPLE 

Policy 

While  the  country  church  should  minister  to  the  efficient  and 
successful,  to  the  end  that  it  may  hold  the  community  through 
competent  leadership,  it  should  minister  with  special  zeal  to  the 
ineffective,  the  poor  and  the  degenerate,  since  they  also  belong 
to  Christ.  The  rapidly  increasing  instability  of  the  rural  popula- 
tion lays  upon  the  church  the  special  duty  of  religious  and  social 
helpfulness  to  the  tenant  farmer  and  the  hired  man. 

Program 

1.  Organize  clubs  within  the  church  for  community  service 
projects ;  bring  in  outside  speakers  at  club  dinners,  etc.,  to  discuss 
community  work. 

2.  Utilize  existing  women's  organizations  for  larger  and  more 
effective  service. 

3.  Encourage  use  of  the  church  buildings  by  organizations  and 
societies. 

4.  Give  public  advocacy  to  various  forms  of  social  service, 
such  as  clean-up  days,  community  picnics,  play  festivals,  town 
improvement,  Arbor  day,  beautifying  cemetery  or  common,  etc. 

5.  Preach  contentment  with  rural  life  and  adequacy  of  coun- 
try as  a  life  investment. 

6.  Make  church  sociables  community  affairs,  if  possible,  with 
all  welcome. 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  449 

V.    THE   CHURCH   THE   SERVANT   OP   THE   COMMUNITY 

Policy 

The  country  church  should  regard  itself  as  the  servant  of  the 
entire  community,  and  should  be  deeply  concerned  with  all  legit- 
imate agencies  in  the  community;  it  should  give  them  support 
and  promotion  as  there  may  be  opportunity  or  need.  It  should 
suggest  and  inspire  rather  than  instigate  and  supervise,  but  it 
may  undertake  any  new  service  for  which  there  is  not  other  pro- 
vision. 

Cooperation  with  Other  Agencies. — The  church  should  recog- 
nize a  division  of  functions  in  the  community,  and  should  co- 
operate with  other  institutions  and  organizations.  Such  adjust- 
ments are  made  individually  for  the  most  part,  but  by  public  ad- 
vocacy and  by  its  educational  methods  the  church  may  exert  its 
collective  influence  for  all  ends  that  may  help  to  upbuild  the  com- 
munity. 

Program 

Community  movements  should  be  instigated  or  aided  by  active 
cooperation,  as  the  need  may  be,  for  such  ends  as  the  following : 

1.  Temperance,  wherever  the  community  is  suffering  from  in- 
temperance or  lawlessness ;  a  campaign  for  no  license  or  prohibi- 
tion ;  law  enforcement ;  Sabbath  observance. 

2.  Public  health  and  sanitation. 

3.  Good  roads. 

4.  School  education  for  rural  life,  and  ordinarily  consolidated 
schools. 

5.  Intellectual  development  by  means  of  libraries,   lectures, 
reading  circles,  clubs,  and  similar  agencies. 

6.  Provisions  for  public  recreation,  and  a  Saturday  half-holi- 
day for  agricultural  laborers. 

7.  Promotion    of    demonstrations    of    recreation    on    church 
grounds  if  no  better  place  can  be  had. 

8.  Better  farming  and  better  farm  homes,  with  special  stress 
upon  extension  work  of  agricultural  colleges. 

9.  Beauty  of  village,  roadsides  and  private  grounds. 

10.  Celebration  of  religious  and  patriotic  holidays,  observance 
of  old  home  week,  and  production  of  historical  pageants. 


450  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

11.  Education  of  the  people  by  preaching  on  community  plan- 
ning. 

12.  Establishment  of  a  supervised  social  center  or  community 
house. 

13.  Local  federation  for  ru-ral  progress  and  other  community 
programs. 

14.  In  general,  promotion  of  cooperation  among  farmers  in 
their  production,  buying,  and  selling. 

VI.    COOPERATION   AMONG   THE    CHURCHES 

Policy 

Groups  of  country  churches,  with  natural  and  social  affilia- 
tions, should  unite  for  the  study  of  their  special  field  and  for  the 
more  effective  use  of  their  resources  in  meeting  its  needs,  thus 
forming  a  church  federation.  Churches  should  consolidate  where 
only  one  church  is  needed  in  a  community.  In  some  communities 
a  federated  church  may  be  practicable,  an  arrangement  by  which 
all  churches  in  a  community  unite  for  worship  and  work  but  each 
church  society  preserves  its  corporate  identity. 

Program 

1.  Union  meetings  for  religious  and  patriotic  purposes,  song 
service,  etc. 

2.  Community  projects  for  various  forms  of  community  wel- 
fare, Christmas  tree,  etc. 

3.  Evangelistic  campaign  on  the  cooperative  basis,  preceded  by 
survey  and  followed  by  effective  organized  work. 

4.  Union  campaigns  on  moral  issues  like  temperance. 

5.  Cooperative  surveys. 

6.  Cooperative  Boys'  and  Girls'  clubs. 

7.  Cooperative  play  festivals. 

8.  Cooperative  community  pageants. 

9.  Cooperation  in  athletic  contests. 

VII.   DIVISION   OF   LABOR 

Policy 

Oftentimes  the  greatest  efficiency  of  the  church  requires  spe- 
cialized agencies  for  special  tasks.  The  rural  Y.  M.  C.  A.  and 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  451 

Y.  W.  C.  A.,  the  young  people's  societies,  and  other  similar  or- 
ganized allies  of  the  country  church  should  therefore  be  utilized 
and  encouraged  where  needed,  and  supported  in  their  work. 

Program 

1.  Furnishing  leaders  for  special  community  tasks. 

2.  Encouraging  financial  support. 

3.  Special  work  with  boys  and  girls. 

4.  Special  work  with  young  people. 

5.  Athletic  league  and  recreation  features. 

6.  Use  of  church  buildings  for  these  "allies  of  the  country 
church. ' ' 

VIII.    ADMINISTRATION    AND   FINANCE 

Policy 

A  sound  business  organization  and  an  adequate  financial  policy 
arc  essential  to  the  conduct  of  the  country  church.  This  involves 
utilizing  the  available  resources  of  a  community,  the  relation  of 
the  local  church  to  the  Home  Missionary  Aid,  the  matter  of  mini- 
mum salaries  for  the  resident  ministers,  and  proper  methods  of 
financial  accounting. 

Program 

1.  Official  boards  and  organizations  regularly  and  completely 
organized  with  proper  program  of  work. 

2.  Carefully  kept   records   and   regular  reports  of  work  in 
finances. 

3.  Systematic,  community-wide,  and  adequate  financial  plan 
for  local  church  support  and  benevolences. 

IX.    THE   PREACHER    AND    HIS    HELPERS 

Policy 

A  resident  ministry  is  essential  to  the  highest  efficiency  of  the 
country  church.  It  should  be  adequately  trained  to  meet  rural 
needs.  Permanency  of  tenure  should  be  sought  by  every  possible 
means,  including  the  payment  of  salaries  commensurate  with 
present  economic  needs  and  proportionate  to  ability  and  service. 
One  of  the  greatest  tasks  of  the  pastor  is  to  inspire,  enlist,  and 
train  all  available  leadership  on  behalf  of  the  full  measure  of  the 
service  of  the  church  to  its  members  and  to  the  community. 


452  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Program 

The  Training  of  Church  Workers 

1.  Every  effort  should  be  made  to  train  leadership  in  the  local 
church,  such  as  Sunday  School  teachers,  lay  readers,  elders,  dea- 
cons, leaders  of  young  people's  societies,  officers  of  the  various 
organizations  for  old  and  young  within  the  church. 

2.  Training  in  young  people's  meetings. 

3.  Training  in  Bible  School. 

4.  Normal  class  leader  and  lectures. 

5.  Conferences  and  institutes. 

6.  Reading  and  correspondence  courses. 

7.  Personal  interviews. 

8.  Practice  work  for  novices,  including  apprenticeship  system. 

9.  Inter-church  visitation. 

X.    THE   PREACHER   A    COMMUNITY   BUILDER 

Policy 

The  immediate  work  of  the  pastor  is  with  the  local  church  to 
which  he  is  responsible,  but  his  efforts  should  by  no  means  be 
confined  to  the  church.  The  church  should,  as  it  were,  lend  its 
pastor  to  the  community  for  such  helpfulness  to  individuals, 
agencies,  and  causes  as  will  definitely  contribute  to  the  building 
up  of  the  community  as  a  whole. 

Program 

The  pastor  may  help  in  many  or  all  of  the  tasks  of  rural  com- 
munity building  that  have  been  suggested  heretofore  in  this  out- 
line on  behalf  of  "better  farming,  better  business,  and  better 
living. ' ' 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH 

Ashenhurst,  J.  0.     The  Day  of  the   Country  Church.     Funk,  N.  Y., 

1910. 

Beard,  A.  F.     Life  of  John  Frederick  Oberlin.  Pilgrim,  Boston,  1909. 
Bemis,  C.  0.     The  Church  in  the  Country  Town.     American  Baptist 

Assn.,  Boston,  1912. 
Branson,  E.  C.     The  Church  as  a  Country  Life  Defense.     Bui.  State 

Normal  School,  Athens,  Ga.,  1911. 


THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH  453 

Bricker,  G.  A.  Solving  the  Country  Church  Problem.  Eaton,  N.  Y., 
1913. 

Butterfield,  K.  L.  The  Country  Church  and  the  Rural  Problem. 
Univ.  of  Chicago  Press,  1011. 

Carver,  T.  N.  Rural  Economy  as  a  Factor  in  the  Success  of  the 
Church.  Bui.  No.  8,  Social  Service  Series,  American  Unitarian 
Assoc.,  Boston. 

Dubois,  Leo  L.  The  Catholic  Church  and  Social  Service.  The  South 
Mobilizing  for  Social  Service.  (Addresses  Southern  Sociological 
Congress,  1913),  pp.  584-596,  Nashville,  Tenn. 

Earp,  E.  A.  The  Rural  Church  Movement.  Methodist  Book  Con- 
cern, N.  Y.,  1914. 

Feeman,  Harlan  L.  The  Kingdom  and  the  Farm.  Revell,  Chicago, 
1914. 

Galpin,  C.  J.  The  Country  Church  an  Economic  and  Social  Force. 
Bui.  278,  Agric.  Exper.  Sta.  of  Univ.  of  Wis.,  Madison,  1917. 

Gill,  C.  0.,  and  Pinchot,  Gifford.     The  Country  Church.     Macmillan, 

N.  Y.,  1913. 
Six  Thousand  Country  Churches.     Macmillan,  1920. 

Groves,  E.  R.  The  Church  and  the  Small  Community.  Rural  Man- 
hood, Vol.  G,  May,  June,  Oct.,  1915,  and  Jan.,  1916. 

Hammond,  F.  J.  The  Country  Parson.  Morehouse,  Milwaukee,  Wis., 
1913. 

Hart,  J.  K.  The  Religious  Life  of  the  Community.  In  his  Educa- 
tional Resources  of  Village  and  Rural  Communities,  pp.  176-197, 
Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1913. 

Hayes,  E.  C.  The  Church  and  the  Rural  Community.  Amer.  Journ. 
of  Soc.,  16 :  693-695,  March,  1911. 

Israel,  Henry.  The  Country  Church  and  Community  Cooperation. 
Asscc.  Press,  N.  Y.,  1913. 

Macfarland,  Charles  S.  The  Protestant  Church  and  Social  Service. 
The  South  Mobilizing  for  Social  Service.  (Addresses  Southern 
Sociological  Congress,  1913),  pp.,  596-612. 

Masters,  V.  I.  Country  Church  in  the  South.  Publicity  Board  of 
Southern  Baptist  Convention,  Atlanta,  ,1916. 

Miller,  G.  A.     Problems  of  the  Town  Church.     Revell,  Chicago,  1902. 

Mills,  Harlow  S.  The  Making  of  a  Country  Parish.  Missionary 
Education  Movement  of  the  U.  S.  and  Canada,  N.  Y.,  1914. 

Practicing  Church  Unity  in  Vermont.  Conf.  of  Denominational  Super- 
intendents and  Secretaries,  Rev.  C.  C.  Merrill,  Sec.,  St.  Johnsbury, 
Vt.,  April,  1919. 

Roads,  Charles.  Rural  Christendom.  Amer.  Sunday  School  Union, 
Philadelphia,  1909. 

Rural  Church  and  Community  Betterment.  Association  Press,  N.  Y., 
1911. 

Staratt,  F.  A.  The  Demands  of  the  Rural  Church  upon  the  Theologi- 
cal Curriculum.  Amer.  Journal  of  Theology,  22 :  479-96,  October, 
1918. 

Symposium  "The  Church  and  the  Rural  Community."  Amer.  Jour,  of 
Sociology  16:668-702,  March,  1911. 

Vogt,  Paul  L.  The  Church  and  Country  Life.  Miss.  Educ.  Movement, 
N.  Y.,  1916. 


454  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Wallace,  Henry.  Remarks  on  Presentation  of  Report  of  Commission 
Upon  the  Rural  Church — Men  and  Religion  Movement.  Men  and 
Religion  Messages — Rural  Church,  VI :  119-137,  Association  Press, 
N.  Y.,  1912. 

Wells,  George  Frederick.  The  Country  Church.  In  Bailey's  Encyclo- 
pedia of  Amer.  Agric.,  IV :  297. 

The  Rural  Church.     Annals  40: 131-139,  March,  1912. 
Wells,  H.  S.     The  Making  of  a  Country  Parish.     Miss.  Educ.  Move- 
ment, N.  Y.,  1914. 

Wilson,  W.  H.  The  Church  of  the  Open  Country.  Miss.  Educ.  Move- 
ment, N.  Y.,  1911. 

The  Church  at  the  Center.     Miss.  Educ.  Movement,  N.  Y.,  1914. 
Surveys  of  Rural   Churches,   Department   of   Church   and   Country 
Life,  Presbyterian  Board  of  Home  Missions,  156  Fifth  Ave.,  N.  Y. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
THE  VILLAGE 

THE  HISTORY  OF  VILLAGE  IMPROVEMENT 
IN  THE  UNITED  STATES1 

WARREN   H.    MANNING 

THE  precursor  of  the  American  village  improvement  was  the 
early  New  England  village  Common, — the  people's  forum,  the 
center  of  their  social  and  industrial  life,  a  place  of  recreation, 
and  on  it,  at  Lexington,  was  t*he  opening  act  of  that  great  drama 
that  led  to  the  American  independence.  Early,  especially  Eng- 
lish, colonists  set  apart  liberal  portions  of  land  to  be  used  by 
householders  in  common  for  public  landings,  pasturage,  and  from 
which  to  secure  timber,  sedges,  and  the  like, — all  under  restric- 
tions imposed  by  the  citizens  in  town  meeting.  This  Common 
was  at  first  an  irregular  plot  or  a  very  wide  street,  around  or 
along  which  the  village  grew.  Many  are  still  retained,  sometimes 
little,  sometimes  much,  diminished  by  unauthorized  encroach- 
ments of  adjacent  property  owners  or  by  the  town's  permitting 
public  or  semi-public  buildings  to  be  placed  upon  them.  Public 
landings  have  suffered  even  more  from  private  appropriation, 
and  most  of  the  "common  lands"  lying  away  from  the  villages 
became  * '  proprietary  land, ' '  at  an  early  date,  by  such  acts  as  the 
following:  Maiden,  Massachusetts,  in  1694,  voted:  "Yt  ye 
Common  be  divided;  bottom  and  top  yt  is  land  and  wood,"  and 
it  ordered  that  commissioners  making  the  division  "employ  an 
artist  to  lay  out  ye  lots."  While  such  acts  were  legitimate,  they 
were  not  always  wise,  for  often  the  same  land  has  been  re-pur- 
chased for  public  use  at  large  expense. 

The  extent  of  the  illegitimate  encroachment  of  private  indi- 
viduals upon  lands  reserved  for  the  common  good  was  not  realized 
in  Massachusetts  until  Mr.  J.  B.  Harrison  investigated  for  The 

i  Adapted  from  the  Art  World  and  Craftsman,  V:  423-432,  Feb.,  1904. 

455 


456  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Trustees  of  Public  Reservations  the  status  of  such  lands  in  the 
sea-shore  towns.  A  typical  example  of  his  findings  will  suffice : 

"Marshfield  formerly  had  a  Common.  In  earliest  times  it  was 
the  training  field.  The  town  gave  a  religious  society  a  perpetual 
lease  of  a  part  of  it  as  a  site  for  its  chapel,  and  then  ran  a  public 
road  curving  diagonally  through  what  remained.  During 
recent  years  various  persons  have  obtained  permission  to  build 
sheds  on  the  remnants  of  the  Common,  and  there  is  not  much  of  it 
left  for  future  appropriation. ' ' 

That  street  trees  were  appreciated  in  the  earliest  days  is  evi- 
denced by  the  action  of  a  town  meeting  in  Watertown,  Massa- 
chusetts, in  1637,  which  passed  a  vote  "to  mark  the  shade  trees 
by  the  roadside  with  a  'W  and  fineing  any  person  who  shall  fell 
one  of  the  trees  thus  marked  18  shillings."  That  this  interest 
was  continuous  is  made  evident  by  the  age  of  existing  homestead 
and  roadside  trees,  very  many  of  which  are  between  one  hundred 
and  two  hundred  years  old.  This  appreciation  did  not,  however, 
extend  far  beyond  the  residential  districts,  for  lumbermen  and 
farmers  very  generally  appropriated  to  their  own  use  all  valuable 
trees  on  the  public  ways  unless  close  to  their  houses.  Notwith- 
standing this,  there  were  always  agreeable,  if  not  always  stately, 
woodland  drives,  for  it  required  from  thirty  to  fifty  years  for  a 
crop  to  grow. 

To  the  village  common  outlying  roads  rambled  in  by  graceful 
curves  over  lines  of  least  resistance  as  established  by  Indians,  by 
cows,  and  by  men  of  good  sense.  Later,  that  man  of  ''much 
skill"  and  less  sense,  the  turnpike  engineer,  by  projecting  his 
roads  on  straight  lines,  regardless  of  hill,  dale,  or  water,  managed, 
at  great  cost,  to  ruin  much  of  beauty  and  convenience,  just  as  the 
road-builders  of  the  West  are  following  section  lines  with,  how- 
ever, the  frequent  additional  disadvantage  of  the  zig-zag  course 
along  two  sides  of  each  section.  Such  engineers  and  the  sur- 
veyor who  made  his  plans  of  streets  and  lots  on  paper  from 
plotted  property-lines  and  angles  without  levels  and  with  little 
regard  to  existing  surface  conditions  or  existing  streets,  were  then 
and  are  now  destroying  great  beauty  at  unnecessary  cost.  In  the 
early  days  these  outlying  roads  were  of  liberal  width,  usually 
four,  often  ten,  and  sometimes  more,  rods  wide.  Such  roads 
have  also  been  encroached  upon  by  adjacent  property-owners. 


THE  VILLAGE  457 

The  first  checks  to  the  petty  local  land  and  timber  thieves  came 
when  permanent  roads  were  established  over  which  they  dare  not 
reach  and,  more  recently,  from  the  growth  of  a  public  sentiment 
against  such  encroachments  which  they  dare  not  challenge. 

That  this  early  interest  in  village  improvement  was  more  pro- 
nounced in  the  older  Eastern  States,  especially  in  New  England, 
than  elsewhere,  was  probably  due  to  the  more  compact  and  direct 
method  of  local  government  represented  by  the  New  England 
town  meeting,  and  by  the  antecedents  of  the  first  settlers.  Many 
causes  have  contributed  to  the  growth  of  this  movement  that 
sprang  into  being  in  the  earliest  days,  and  struggled  for  years  in 
the  forests  of  new  movements,  and  against  the  weeds  of  selfish 
interest,  until  it  is  now  a  sturdy  growth  with  many  stout  branches 
and  a  promise  of  great  fruitfulness.  There  has  been  a  growing 
recognition  of  the  distinct  utility  and  the  continuous  growth  in 
beauty  of  tree  and  shrub-planted  streets  and  public  reservations 
and  of  rural  roads  following  lines  suggested  by  nature.  -This 
growth  in  beauty,  exercising  the  refining  influence  that  such 
growth  always  does,  brought  about  such  a  quickening  of  public 
opinion  that  unlovely,  untidy,  and  unsafe  public  and  private 
grounds  and  public  ways,  once  passed  unnoticed,  became  so  pain- 
fully obvious  that  action  was  demanded.  At  the  same  time  the 
value  of  beauty,  convenience,  and  safety  as  an  asset  was  made 
obvious  by  the  attractiveness  of  towns  so  favored  to  persons  of 
culture  and  means  who  were  seeking  permanent  or  summer  homes. 

A  first  evidence  of  organized  effort  to  promote  these  objects  ap- 
peared in  the  Agricultural  Societies  that  grew  out  of  the  earlier 
1 1  Societies  for  Promoting  the  Arts. ' '  They  were  formed  in  South 
Carolina,  Pennsylvania,  and  Massachusetts  a  few  years  before 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  They  gave  considerable  atten- 
tion to  the  improvement  of  home  grounds,  to  street -tree  planting, 
and  to  the  preservation  and  reproduction  of  the  forest.  That  of 
Massachusetts,  for  example,  in  1793,  offered  prizes  to  persons  who 
should  cut  and  clear  the  most  land  in  three  years,  and  for  the 
most  expeditious  method  of  destroying  brush  without  plowing; 
but  answers  to  questions  sent  out  at  this  time  showed  so  alarming 
a  decrease  in  the  forest  areas  that  the  policy  was  reversed  and 
prizes  were  offered  for  forest  plantations  and  the  management  of 
wood-lots.  This  same  society  endowed  one  of  the  first  botanic 


458  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

gardens,  and  is  still  engaged  in  good  works.  The  development  in 
such  societies  of  the  horticultural  interest  led,  in  the  first  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  to  the  formation  in  several  States  of 
horticultural  societies  that  gave  much  more  attention  to  these 
objects  and  occasional  attention  to  public  reservations. 

During  and  just  after  the  same  period,  a  number  of  horticul- 
tural magazines  came  into  being  under  the  direction  of  such  men 
as  A.  J.  Downing,  Thomas  Meehan,  and  C.  M.  Hovey,  and  some 
literary  magazines,  especially  Putnam's,  gave  space  to  the  writers 
on  village  improvement.  Then  came  the  group  of  writers  repre- 
sented by  Bryant  and  Emerson,  whose  keen  insight  into  and 
close  sympathy  with  nature  was  transmitted  to  so  many  of  their 
readers,  and,  above  all,  Thoreau,  the  Gilbert  White  of  America, 
with  a  broader  point  of  view,  whose  writings  did  not,  how- 
ever, receive  their  full  recognition  until  much  later. 

It  is  very  significant  that  two  well-marked  phases  of  the  "im- 
provement of  towns  and  cities"  should  have  developed  at  almost 
the  same  time.  First,  in  a  studied  plan  of  public  grounds,  at 
Washington  in  1851,  to  be  followed  by  the  acquirement  of  a 
public  park  and  the  appointment  of  a  Park  Commission  in  New 
York  in  1857,  and  second,  by  the  organization  of  the  first  village 
improvement  society  by  Miss  Mary  G.  Hopkins,  at  Stockbridge, 
Mass.,  in  1853.  Equally  significant-  as  indicating  the  impetus 
the  movement  is  to  attain,  was  the  action  of  the  national  Gov- 
ernment a  quarter  century  later  in  acquiring  great  reservations, 
first,  like  the  Yellowstone  Park,  for  their  natural  beauty,  then, 
later,  as  forest  reservations  for  economic  reasons,  and  such  bat- 
tlegrounds as  that  of  Gettysburg,  on  account  of  their  historical 
associations. 

The  first  powerful  impetus  to  village  improvement  was  given 
by  B.  G.  Northrup,  Secretary  of  the  Connecticut  State  Board  of 
Education,  who,  in  his  report  of  1869,  wrote  upon  "How  to 
Beautify  and  Build  up  Our  Country  Towns,"  an  article  which 
he  states  was  received  with  ridicule.  He  thereafter  for  years 
wrote  much,  lectured  often,  and  before  1880  had  organized  not 
less  than  one  hundred  societies  in  the  New  England  and  Middle 
States.  His  writings  were  published  by  the  daily  papers,  and 
the  New  York  Tribune  republished  and  offered  for  sale,  in  1891, 
at  three  dollars  per  hundred,  his  "Rural  Improvement  Associa- 


THE  VILLAGE  459 

tions,"  which  he  first  published  in  1880.  It  is  interesting  to 
note  some  of  the  objects  especially  touched  upon  in  this  pamphlet : 
"To  cultivate  public  spirit  and  foster  town  pride,  quicken  in- 
tellectual life,  promote  good  fellowship,  public  health,  improve- 
ment of  roads,  roadsides,  and  sidewalks,  street  lights,  public 
parks,  improvement  of  home  and  home  life,  ornamental  and 
economic  tree  planting,  improvement  of  railroad  stations,  rustic 
roadside  seats  for  pedestrians,  betterment  of  factory  surround- 
ings." Other  men  active  in  the  movement  during  this  period 
were  B.  L.  Butcher,  of  West  Virginia,  and  Horace  Bushnell,  in 
California. 

That  this  activity  made  its  impress  upon  the  literature  of  the 
day  will  be  evident  to  those  who  read  "  Village  and  Village  Life," 
by  Eggleston,  "My  Days  at  Idlewild,"  by  N.  P.  Willis,  and  to 
those  who  search  the  files  of  the  New  York  Tribune  and  Post  and 
the  Boston  Transcript,  The  Horticulturist,  Hovey's  Magazine, 
Putnam's  Magazine,  the  Atlantic,  Harper's,  and  others.  Much 
of  this  writing  and  the  few  books  devoted  to  the  subject,  such 
as  Downing 's  "Rural  Essays,"  Scott's  "Suburban  Home 
Grounds,"  and  Copeland's  "Country  Life,"  had  more  to  do 
with  the  improvement  of  home  ground;  than  with  town  planning. 
It  was  reserved  for  Mr.  Charles  Mulford  Robinson  in  his  very 
recent  "Improvement  of  Towns  and  Cities"  and  "Modern  Civic 
Art"  to  give  a  permanent  place  in  our  literature  to  that  phase 
of  the  work  of  town  and  city  improvement,  although  Bushnell, 
Olmsted,  and  others  contributed  to  the  subjects  in  reports,  maga- 
zines and  published  addresses. 

During  this  same  period  a  broader  and  deeper  interest  in  for- 
estry and  tree-planting  was  stimulated,  especially  in  the  Middle 
West,  by  such  men  as  John  A.  Warder,  of  Ohio,  and  Governor 
J.  Sterling  Morton  of  Nebraska,  at  whose  suggestion  Arbor  Day 
was  first  observed  in  his  state,  and  there  officially  recognized  in 
1872.  By  the  observance  of  this  day  a  multitude  of  school  chil- 
dren and  their  parents  have  become  interested  in  tree-planting 
on  home  and  school  grounds.  For  this,  Mr.  Morton  deserves  the 
'same  recognition  that  belongs  to  Mr.  Clapp  and  the  Massa- 
chusetts Horticultural  Society  for  the  beginning  and  promot- 
ing of  the  equally  important  school-garden  movement. 

Little  do  we  appreciate  to  what  Dr.  Warder's  forestry  move- 


460  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

ment  has  led  in  the  West.  It  has,  by  its  encouragement  of  home- 
stead plantations,  greatly  modified  the  landscape  of  the  vast 
central  prairie  region  of  our  continent,  "What  was  an  endless 
and  monotonous  sea  of  grass  is  now  a  great  procession  of  ever- 
changing  vistas  between  groups  of  trees.  It  has  resulted  in  our 
Government's  establishing  fifty-three  reservations  containing 
sixty-two  million  acres  of  public  forests  managed  by  an  efficient 
department,  in  establishing  state  forest  commissions  and  reser- 
vations, in  the  formation  of  national,  state  and  local  forestry 
associations,  many  of  which  give  quite  as  much  attention  to  the 
forest  as  an  element  of  beauty  in  landscape  and  to  the  preserva- 
tion of  roadside  growth  and  encouragement  of  public  and  private 
tree-planting  for  beauty  alone,  as  they  do  to  the  economic  prob- 
lems. In  Massachusetts  such  an  association  secured  laws  plac- 
ing all  town  roadside  growth  in  charge  of  a  Tree  Warden.  The 
importance  of  a  centralized,  instead  of  the  individual  property- 
owner's  control,  of  street  trees  is  receiving  general  recognition. 
Mr.  Wm.  F.  Gale,  the  City  Forester  of  Springfield,  Mass.,  by  his 
enlistment  of  school  children  as  street  tree  defenders,  has  shown 
how  centralized  control  may  greatly  stimulate  individual 
interests. 

A  little  later  in  this  period  there  began  to  flow  from  the  pens 
of  such  men  as  Hamilton  Gibson,  Bradford  Torrey,  John  Bur- 
roughs, John  Muir,  and  Ernest  Thompson  Seton,  a  literature  that 
has  drawn  the  people  so  close  to  nature  that  they  are  seeing  and 
feeling  keenly  the  beauty  of  the  common  things  right  about 
them,  and  drawing  away  from  the  meagerness,  garishness,  and 
conventionality  of  the  lawns  and  lawn  planting  of  the  period  that 
followed  the  decline  of  the  rich,  old-fashioned  garden  of  our 
grandmothers,  and  began  with  the  vulgar  "bedding-out"  craze 
that  followed  displays  at  the  Philadelphia  Centennial.  Then 
came  the  World's  Fair  at  Chicago,  where  many  men  of  many 
arts  worked  earnestly  in  harmony,  as  they  had  never  done  be- 
fore, to  produce  an  harmonious  result.  This  bringing  together 
of  artists  in  the  making  of  the  Fair,  gave  a  tremendous  impetus 
to  civic  and  village  improvement  activities,  in  common  with  all 
others. 

The  American  Park  and  Outdoor  Art  Association,  organized 
in  Louisville  in  1897,  and  giving  special  attention  to  the  public 


THE  VILLAGE  461 

park  interests,  was  the  first  national  association  representing 
the  interests  under  review.  In  1900,  the  American  League  for 
Civic  Improvement  was  formed  at  Springfield  to  give  special 
attention  to  improvement  associations,  in  the  promotion  of  which 
it  has  been  most  efficient.  The  League  for  Social  Service,  of 
New  York,  is  another  most  efficient  association  working  along 
similar  lines,  but  giving  more  attention  to  sociological  subjects. 
This  year  the  first  state  association  of  village  improvement  so- 
cieties was  organized  in  Massachusetts.  The  association,  first  re- 
ferred to,  invited  representatives  of  all  national  associations  hav- 
ing similar  objects  in  view  to  attend  its  Boston  Meeting  in  1902, 
where  the  action  taken  resulted  in  the  formation  of  the  Civic 
Alliance,  to  be  general  clearing-house  for  all  activities  and  ideas 
represented  by  these  various  associations.  The  leaders  of  the 
first  two  associations,  feeling  that  greater  efficiency  could  be  se- 
cured by  working  together,  have  taken  action  toward  a  merger, 
the  following  sections  being  suggested  for  the  new  association: 

Arts  and  Crafts. 

City  Making  and  Town  Improvement. 

Civic  Art. 

Factory  Betterment. 

Libraries. 

Parks  and  Public  Reservations. 

Propaganda. 

Public  Nuisances. 

Public  Recreation. 

Railroad  Improvement. 

Rural  Improvement. 

School  Extension. 

Social  Settlements. 

Women's  Club  Work. 

The  National  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs,  with  its  mem- 
bership of  over  230,000,  has  done  much"  to  improve  towns  and 
cities  through  its  local  clubs.  How  important  this  woman's 
work  is  can  be  known  only  to -those  who  can  appreciate  with 
what  moral  courage,  enthusiasm,  and  self-denial  women  will 
take  up  new  interests,  and  how  often  one  woman's  persistency 


462  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

and  persuasiveness  is  the  impelling  force  behind  important 
movements  for  the  public  good. 

One  of  the  best  evidences  that  beauty  and  good  order  pay, 
is  given  by  the  action  of  railroad  corporations  throughout  the 
country,  which  have,  by  the  improvement  of  their  station  grounds 
and  right-of-way,  created  everywhere  a  sentiment  in  favor  of 
village  improvement. 

The  United  States  Government  is  issuing  numerous  bulletins 
that  relate  to  village  improvement  work,  and  it  recognized  the 
importance  of  the  school  garden  movement  by  sending  a  special 
representative,  Mr.  Dick  J.  Crosby,  to  the  School  Garden  Ses- 
sion of  the  American  Park  and  Outdoor  Art  Association  at  its 
Boston  meeting.  The  National  Educational  Association  also  de- 
voted a  session  to  the  same  subject  at  its  last  meeting.  Among 
universities,  Cornell  has  done  great  good  in  establishing  courses, 
and  in  sending  out  pamphlets  on  the  improvement  of  home  and 
school  grounds,  chiefly  under  the  direction  of  Professor  L.  H. 
Bailey.  Through  this  same  agency  "Uncle  John"  Spencer  has, 
by  letters  to  and  from  a  multitude  of  children,  brought  them  to 
learn  much  about  the  objects  in  their  every-day  life,  by  drawing 
out  their  powers  of  observation,  reasoning,  and  expression. 
Quite  as  important  are  the  newspapers  and  magazines.  They 
are  giving  much  space  to  the  movement,  and  offering  prizes  for 
good  work.  The  Chicago  Tribune  not  only  offered  prizes  in  1891, 
but  gave  a  page  or  more  to  improvement  work  for  several  months 
in  succession.  The  Youth 's  Companion  has  not  only  given  space 
to  the  work,  but  has  sent  out  thousands  of  pamphlets  on  village 
improvement  of  school  grounds.  Garden  and  Forest,  during  its 
time,  was  a  powerful  agency  of  the  highest  order  under  the  direc- 
tion of  Professor  Charles  S.  Sargent,  and  with  Mr.  W.  A.  Stiles 
as  editor.  Of  the  existing  publications  Country  Life  in  Amer- 
ica, Park  and  Cemetery,  American  Gardening,  The  House  Beau- 
tiful, House  and  Garden,  Home  and  Flowers,  The  Chautauquan, 
and  others,  give  a  large  share  of  their  space  to  improvement 
work. 

Since  the  appointment  of  a  Park  Commission  in  New  York  to 
make  and  administer  a  park  for  the  people,  nearly  every  large 
city  and  many  towns  have  their  Park  Commission  and  public 
parks.  States  also  are  acquiring  land  to  preserve  natural  beauty, 


THE  VILLAGE  463 

such  as  in  the  Wachusett  and  Graylock  mountain  reservations  in 
Massachusetts;  for  their  historic  value,  as  at  Valley  Forge  in 
Pennsylvania ;  for  the  protection  of  the  drainage  basin  to  a  city 
water  supply,  as  in  New  York  and  Massachusetts;  for  a  game 
and  forest  preserve,  as  in  Minnesota.  Two  states  have  cooper- 
ated in  the  acquirement  of  a  reservation  for  beauty  alone,  as  at 
the  Dalles  of  the  St.  Croix,  lying  partly  in  Minnesota  and 
partly  in  Wisconsin,  and  furthermore,  commissions  under  two 
governments  have  cooperated  in  accomplishing  the  same  purpose 
at  the  Niagara  Falls  Reservation. 

As  an  outcome  of  all  this,  we  may  look  for  the  establishment 
of  State  Park  Commissions,  already  suggested  in  Massachusetts, 
and  for  which  a  bill  was  introduced  into  the  Minnesota  legisla- 
ture, and  ultimately  a  National  Park  Commission  to  tie  together 
the  great  national,  state,  county,  city  and  town  public  holdings 
that  will  include  such  dominating  landscape  features  as  moun- 
tains, river-banks,  steep  slopes,  and  sea  and  lake  shores:  land 
for  the  most  part  of  little  value  for  commercial,  industrial,  or 
agricultural  purposes,  but  of  great  value  as  elements  of  beauti- 
ful landscapes.  The  selection  of  such  lands  will  ultimately  be 
governed  largely  by  natural  and  by  economic  conditions  as  es- 
tablished by  such  bureaus  as  that  of  Soil  Investigation  of  the 
Government,  which  is  engaged  in  investigating  and  mapping  soil 
conditions,  as  well  as  by  the  Forestry  Bureau  already  referred  to, 
and  others.  At  present,  large  areas  of  private  property,  many 
lakes,  rivers,  and  some  sea-shore,  now  in  private  hands,  are 
opened  to  the  public  without  restriction:  but  with  an  increase 
in  population  and  in  land  values,  the  public  will  be  shut  out 
from  all  points  of  vantage  that  are  not  held  for  the  common 
good,  as  it  is  now  excluded  from  many  miles  of  sea-and-lake- 
shore  by  private  owners,  where  a  few  years  ago  there  were  no 
restrictions. 

The  work  of  the  village  improvement  societies  should  be  di- 
rected toward  this  movement  to  make  our  whole  country  a  park. 
They  should  stop  the  encroachment  of  individuals  upon  public 
holdings,  urge  individuals  to  add  to  such  holdings  by  gifts  of 
land,  fine  old  trees,  or  groups  of  old  trees,  in  prominent  posi- 
tions, in  town  or  city  landscapes.  Every  association  should  se- 
cure and  adopt  a  plan  for  the  future  development  of  the  town 


464  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

as  a  whole,  showing  street  extensions  and  public  reservations  to 
include  such  features  in  such  a  way  that  they  may  become  a  part 
of  a  more  extended  system,  if  this  should  be  brought  about  in 
the  future.  These  societies  should  not  undertake  the  legitimate 
work  of  town  officials,  such  as  street-lighting,  street-tree  plant- 
ing, repair  of  roads  and  sidewalks.  They  should  compel  the  au- 
thorities to  do  such  work  properly,  by  gathering  information  and 
securing  illustrations  to  show  how  much  better  similar  work  is 
being  done  in  other  places,  very  often  at  less  cost.  They  should 
inaugurate  activities  of  which  little  is  known  in  their  community : 
such  as  the  improvement  of  school  and  home  grounds,  and  the 
establishment  of  school-gardens  and  playgrounds.  If  the  policy 
of  such  a  society  be  not  broad  enough  to  admit  the  active  coop- 
eration of  the  ablest  men  and  women  of  a  town,  it  can  accomplish 
but  little.  If  its  methods  are  not  so  administered  as  to  instruct 
up  to  the  highest  ideals,  its  efforts  are  quite  as  likely  to  be  as 
harmful  as  beneficial. 


SOCIAL  PRIVILEGES  OF  VILLAGE  OR  SMALL 
CITY 1 

C.    J.    GALPIN 

THE  general  law  has  recognized  the  village  as  a  community. 
The  Visible  unity  of  the  village  group  of  houses,  stores,  and  shops 
has  been  the  main  warrant  for  treating  the  village  or  small  city 
as  a  community  all  by  itself.  The  people  are  closely  related  in 
business  and  life  and  come  to  feel  a  real  solidarity.  The  legal 
provision  for  incorporation  is  a  presentation  of  a  set  of  new 
powers,  and  new  duties  to  this  group  of  homes  as  a  comprehen- 
sive social  unit.  A  village  legislature,  a  village  executive,  the 
thinkers  and  actors  who  individually  have  succeeded  by  fore- 
cast, insight,  integrity,  and  perseverance,  are  now  banded  for 
the  village  interests.  The  president  or  mayor  now  begins  to 
have  his  vision  widened  from  a  community  pedestal,  and  a  new 
social  machine  for  progress  with  power  is  put  to  work  for  the 
common  good. 

i  Adapted  from  Rural  Life,  pp.  92-94,  Century  Co.,  1918,  and  Bulletin  34, 
"The  Social  Anatomy  of  an  Agricultural  Community,"  pp.  24-28.  Agri- 
cultural Experiment  Station,  Univ.  of  Wisconsin,  Madison. 


THE  VILLAGE  465 

Organizations  and  institutions  spring  up  instinctively  for  the 
village  population.  It  is  assumed  that  there  is  to  be  a  church  or 
churches.  A  village  without  this  ancient  public  agency  at  once 
loses  caste.  The  children  of  villagers  of  course  must  have  social 
privilege  of  instruction  in  race  idealism.  Fraternal  orders  are 
assumed.  Lodges  quickly  spring  up.  Human  fellowship  must 
have  its  ritual  and  mysticism  for  the  villager.  The  library  is 
assumed.  It  may  wait  for  a  benefactor,  but  it  is  counted  on. 
As  soon  as  there  is  sufficient  taxable  property  the  most  important 
and  significant  assumption  is  made — the  village  will  have  a  high 
school.  It  is  taken  for  granted  that  the  children  of  the  village, 
children  whose  roofs  are  near  together,  should  have  the  privilege 
of  four  years'  training  in  idea  organization  and  work  acquaint- 
ance. Amusement  halls,  parks,  bands,  orchestras,  and  baseball 
grounds  are  soon  provided.  As  the  village,  following  its  city 
ideal,  moves  on  into  small  city  government,  multiform  organ- 
ized agencies  and  institutions,  voluntary,  commercial,  or  munici- 
pal in  the  plane  of  public  health,  education,  business,  informa- 
tion, soon  follow. 

The  institutional  reinforcement  of  the  village,  along  with  the 
growing  consciousness  of  village  unity,  clothes  the  villager  with 
a  secondary  social  personality.  This  is  recognized,  even  though 
disparaged  by  the  farmer.  Prestige  is  the  outcome.  Superior- 
ity is  inevitable;  but  here  begin  the  troubles  with  a  necessary 
farm  population,  which  the  banker,  storekeeper,  and  blacksmith 
know  as  the  goose  that  lays  the  golden  egg.  The  problem  is  one 
of  pleasing  the  farmer  and  getting  his  trade,  without  building 
him  and  his  mind,  capacities,  and  wishes,  into  the  community 
fabric.  The  farmer's  money  is  good  and  necessary  and  must  be 
obtained  and  his  good  will  retained;  but  how  to  accomplish 
this  object  is  a  problem.  Thorough-going  incorporation  of  the 
farmer  into  the  stream  of  village  activities  is  frustrated  by  the 
fundamental  conception  of  the  self-sufficiency  of  the  village. 
The  farmer  is  presented  outright  with  a  few  donations,  as 
privileges  in  order  to  bind  him.  Toll,  of  course,  is  to  be  exacted 
by  villagers  somewhere.  Craft  sometimes  takes  the  place  of 
open  dealing.  The  farmer  does  not  share  in  the  control  and 
responsibility  of  certain  things  which  he  occasionally  enjoys  at 
the  village  as  a  spectator.  The  outlying  farm  population  is 


466  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

seldom  massed.  Its  members  come  to  town  by  team  or  automo- 
bile or  on  foot  or  horseback,  do  their  business  without  a  resting 
place  of  their  own,  stand  on  other  people's  streets,  in  other  peo- 
ple's shops,  and  over  other  people's  counters.  They  go  back 
after  some  hours  of  absence  to  their  own  lands,  occupations, 
and  homes.  In  the  village  they  are  aliens,  but  aliens  with  a 
possible  title  to  be  conciliated.  The  embarrassment  is  on  both 
sides.  The  farmer  pays  in  so  much  in  trade  he  feels  that  he 
ought  to  have  consideration;  he  pays  so  little  directly  toward 
the  institutions  that  the  village  considers  that  his  rights  are  not 
compelling.  Puzzle,  perplexity,  and  embarrassment  obscure  the 
whole  relationship  and  situation;  and  the  universal  process  of 
legalized  insulation  of  village  and  city  away  from  the  farm, 
which  has  grown  up  undisputed,  with  scarcely  a  hint  of  abnor- 
mality, is  constantly  shadowed  by  this  overhanging  cloud  of 
doubt. 

The  modern  village  differs  from  the  modern  city  mainly  in  this 
— the  village  industries  are  related  directly  to  the  needs  of  the 
outlying  population  on  the  land  in  addition  to  the  needs  of  the 
village  population.  The  city  contains  industries  related  to  peo- 
ple scattered  over  the  territory  of  county,  state,  or  nation.  As 
soon  as  a  village  obtains  one  knitting  mill,  or  a  latch  factory,  or 
plow  works,  or  iron  smelter  and  the  like,  whose  products  go  to 
people  who  are  not  otherwise  interested  in  the  village,  it  begins 
to  possess  the  problems  of  a  city.  As  this  process  continues,  it 
becomes  less  and  less  dependent  upon  the  agricultural  popula- 
tion within  its  immediate  farm  trade  zone,  and  more  and  more 
upon  scattered  peoples  of  various  sorts,  who  may  never  see  the 
city.  As  the  small  city  grows,  outstripping  its  adjoining  vil- 
lages, these  villages  become  more  or  less  consciously  satellites 
of  the  city.  Wholesale  needs  are  met  in  this  city  for  village 
merchants,  and  special  retail  customers  come  to  buy  clothing 
and  furniture  from  larger  stocks.  A  trade  clientele  is  formed 
reaching  out  over  a  county,  or  two,  or  three,  of  these  seasonal 
or  occasional  village  and  farm  buyers.  This  smaller  city,  then, 
has  a  significance  for  several  communities,  and  becomes  an  inter- 
community center.  Beyond  this  is  the  state  center  for  trade— 
the  metropolis,  with  national  importance. 

So  long  as  a  small  city  is  agricultural  in  its  clientele,  the  land 


THE  VILLAGE  467 

allied  to  it  is  a  permanent  social  factor  from  generation  to  gen- 
eration. It  is  a  part  of  the  equipment  of  the  perennial  ele- 
mental industry  of  this  city  or  village.  Were  there  a  knitting 
mill  on  the  edge  of  a  small  city,  with  five  hundred  employees 
living  about  the  mill,  this  whole  industry — land,  buildings,  and 
people — would  be  unquestionably  part  and  parcel  of  the  city. 
In  like  manner  surrounding  the  agricultural  city  is  a  huge  con- 
tinuous nature  industry,  not  directly  unified  to  be  sure,  but 
real  and  actually  united  just  the  same. 

Every  inch  of  advance  on  the  farm  in  intelligent  skill,  man- 
agerial ability,  moral  control,  governmental  development,  will  be 
reflected  in  the  little  city  by  an  increased  farm  consumption  of 
goods,  higher  grades  of  farm  desire,  and  better  qualities  of  farm 
citizenship ;  whereas  the  same  qualities  of  skill,  intelligence,  and 
integrity  in  the  city  will  be  quickly  transmitted  to  the  farm  and 
to  the  advantage  of  the  population  on  the  land,  if  avenues  of 
social  intercourse  between  "wheel  and  hub"  are  open  wide. 

Our  study  shows  that  the  farm  homes  in  the  trade  zone  of  a 
small  city  share  with  the  city  homes  the  major  commercial  and 
social  interests  requiring  combined  capital  of  many  to  carry  on. 
Circumstances  hitherto  have  hindered  the  large-scale  development 
of  some  of  these  enterprises  among  the  farm  homes,  but  these 
circumstances  may  not  be — in  fact  need  not  be — permanent ;  for 
the  same  incentive  which  has  led  the  city  population  to  spend 
some  of  its  surplus  profits  upon  equipment  for  religion,  higher 
education,  government,  information,  art,  leisure,  and  play,  is 
present  in  a  latent  form  in  the  farm  population,  simply  ready 
to  be  induced  to  join  hands  in  an  alliance  of  fair  play. 


THE  TOWN'S  MORAL  PLAN1 

HARLAN   PAUL  DOUGLASS 

IT  is  possible  for  the  little  town  to  have  a  moral  plan,  approxi- 
mated through  conscious  standards  of  social  control.  As  every- 
where, human  conduct  is  determined  chiefly  by  the  natural  ac- 
quiescence of  the  human  spirit  in  the  ways  of  the  social  order 

i  Adapted  from  "The  Little  Town,"  pp.  115-120,  Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1919. 


468  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

into  which  it  is  born.  In  the  main  these  ways  satisfy  the  indi- 
vidual; even  the  rebel  is  too  unoriginal  to  depart  from  them. 
Moral  sentiment  and  social  convention  do  most  of  their  work 
without  need  of  law  or  police. 

The  control  of  conduct  through  social  tradition  is,  however, 
not  so  simple  as  the  formula  sounds ;  there  are  traditions  rather 
than  a  tradition.  Not  only  is  there  still  a  dash  of  frontier  wild- 
ness  surviving  as  lawlessness  in  the  little  towns  of  much  of  the 
country,  but  the  little  towns  as  a  group  are  peopled  largely  by 
those  who  formerly  lived  in  the  country  and  who  are  still 
largely  dominated  by  the  countryman's  point  of  view.  In  brief, 
they  are  incompletely  socialized.  Their  people  cling  to  country 
ways  in  spite  of  new  environment.  Thus  in  matters  of  sanita- 
tion, the  maintenance  of  the  barnyard  manure  pile  is  a  sacred 
private  right  worth  dying  for,  as  a  symbol  of  our  liberties ;  or  on 
the  other  hand,  as  the  little  town  grows  there  come  to  be  those 
who  want  to  push  on  prematurely  into  city  ways  for  the  free- 
dom of  which  they  contend  as  martyrs  to  new  light.  In  short 
the  struggle  is  always  on  between  existing  conditions  and  ad- 
vancement. Now,  any  group  of  people  which  is  distinctively 
at  outs  with  environment  presents  a  serious  moral  problem.  Just 
as  the  spirit  of  youth  is  inevitably  at  war  with  the  necessary 
limitations  of  the  city  streets,  so  the  rural  mind  is  at  war  with 
little-town  conditions.  Hence  the  necessity  of  vigorous  moral 
control  in  order  to  conform  the  individual  to  the  requirements 
of  collective  life. 

The  minor  struggle  between  traditions,  the  give  and  take  of 
moral  sentiments  in  search  of  equilibrium,  the  clash  between 
temperaments,  ages  and  views  of  life  will  go  on  normally  for- 
ever. But  no  community  can  do  anything  in  the  direction  of 
its  ideals  till  the  fact  and  main  tendencies  of  social  control  are 
settled.  The  little  town  may  as  well  face  its  battle  and  have  it 
over.  The  necessary  ordinances  of  safety  and  decency  are  to  be 
obeyed.  Pigs  and  poultry  will  be  the  most  frequent  issue. 
Their  economic  value  under  town  conditions  must  first  be  de- 
termined. If  it  is  best  to  keep  them  at  all,  the  whole  wearying 
round  of  issues  must  be  pursued — agitation,  education,  a  contest 
in  local  politics,  a  suit  at  law  or  two,  a  clash  at  wills  and  of  per- 
sonal sentiments  all  along  the  line. 


THE  VILLAGE  469 

While  all  moral  battles  must  be  waged  on  every  front  at  once, 
it  is  possible  to  discern  a  sort  of  pedagogical  order  in  which  the 
offensive  should  be  undertaken.  It  would  be  foolish  to  make  1h<> 
first  issue  that  of  closing  cigar  stands  on  Sunday,  which  at  best 
would  only  stir  the  conscience  of  a  fraction  of  the  community,  or 
that  of  enforcing  liquor  laws,  which  always  involves  a  contest 
with  formidable  interests  from  outside  the  community.  Rather 
the  battle  should  be  drawn  on  some  community  issue  pure  and 
simple,  in  which  the  enforcing  of  the  collective  against  the  in- 
dividualistic viewpoint  involves  some  broadly  fundamental  but 
localized  field.  When  the  battle  is  fought  to  a  finish  here  other 
victories  will  come  more  easily. 

The  most  difficult  yet  necessary  phases  of  the  little  town's 
struggle  for  moral  standards  are  those  involving  outside  in- 
terests not  directly  amenable  to  the  community  conscience.  They 
are  often  said  to  "interfere"  with  the  community;  if  so  they 
must  be  made  to  interfere  helpfully  as  well  as  harmfully.  The 
most  frequent  and  insidious  of  these  interests  is  the  organized 
liquor  traffic,  although  often  the  interests  of  alien  corporations 
clash  with  those  of  the  community  and  interfere  in  a  similar 
way.  In  these  cases  the  essential  nature  of  the  problem  is  that 
it  is  not  local  in  character.  Local  tools  are  used,  but  the  prin- 
cipals to  the  conflict  are  too  remote  to  feel  local  pressure.  Under 
such  circumstances  the  only  resource  of  the  little  town  is  to 
combine  with  other  communities  using  the  resources  of  state- 
wide publicity,  organization  and  political  action.  The  unro- 
mantic,  perpetual,  straight-away  pull  of  law-enforcement  with 
all  its  costs  in  time,  money  and  personal  discomfort,  is  the  in- 
evitable price  of  community  morals  in  their  wider  setting. 

Even  more  difficult  than  law  enforcement,  but  affecting  more 
people  in  more  ways  and  entering  more  subtly  into  community 
life,  are  the  problems  of  social  control  in  the  round  of  social 
intercourse ;  of  amusements,  particularly  for  youth ;  the  prob- 
lems of  standards  of  consumption  registered  by  the  expenditure 
of  money,  and  of  the  use  of  leisure.  The  concrete  forms  in 
which  these  issues  confront  the  little  town  are  the  party,  the 
dance,  theater  and  amusement  place ;  dress,  travel,  Sunday  ob- 
servance and  the  like. 

Probably  the  most  rational  method  of  precipitating  a  body  of 


470  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

agreements  in  these  debatable  fields  is  that  of  the  voluntary  ref- 
erendum, which  has  been  tried  out  in  a  number  of  communities. 
It  is  proposed  usually  by  the  federation  of  women's  organiza- 
tions and  consists  simply  in  a  systematic  canvass  of  the  most 
influential  and  earnest  members  of  all  classes  and  tendencies  in 
the  community,  to  see  what  they  think  the  reasonable  standards 
for  "our  town"  are.  At  what  hour  should  the  parties  of  high 
school  young  people  close?  How  many  times  a  week  should 
growing  boys  and  girls  be  away  from  home  at  night  ?  What  is 
a  reasonable  scale  of  entertainment  at  club  functions?  How 
much  should  the  cost  of  graduating  dress  and  attending  functions 
be?  What  are  the  reasonable  terms  of  social  association  be- 
tween adolescents  of  the  two  sexes?  When  the  results  of  such 
questions  are  generalized  and  announced  a  considerable  range 
of  choice  is  still  open,  but  weak-kneed  parents  are  strengthened 
to  enforce  some  kind  of  a  standard.  It  is  easier  for  the  poorer 
hostess  not  to  spend  more  than  she  should.  The  ultra-puritanical 
are  restrained  and  the  way  to  rational  agreements  is  open. 
Surely  this  is  better  than  the  eternal  anxiety  of  the  little  town 
as  to  what  is  right  and  proper  in  social  matters,  the  harsh  judg- 
ments of  the  stricter  upon  the  less  strict,  the  internal  difficulties 
by  which  a  man's  foes  are  often  they  of  his  own  household. 

In  some  such  ways  as  the  above  the  steadying  force  of  social 
standards  may  be  thus  vitally  evolved  without  hardening  into 
unyielding,  clashing  and  non-progressive  traditions. 

So  far  the  discussion  has  concerned  the  logical  fundamentals 
of  little-town  betterment.  It  is  quite  another  thing  to  make  a 
constructive  program  of  social  advance.  All  merely  formal  di- 
rections, and  especially  negative  ones  for  the  control  of  life, 
will  and  ought  to  fail.  The  most  vitalizing  possibility  of  the  lit- 
tle town  is  that  of  having  a  positive  program  secured  by  the  con- 
tinuous activities  of  the  institutions  of  education  and  service, 
and  by  the  direct  pursuit  of  wholesome  ideals  by  individuals. 
One  who  sees  life  steadily  and  sees  it  whole  will  not  attempt  to 
deal  compulsorily  with  structural  fundamentals  without  at  the 
same  time  creating  an  atmosphere  in  which  wholesome  com- 
munity choices  may  take  place.  He  will  not  dare  to  specialize 
on  law  enforcement  until  he  has  created  the  playground  and 
appreciated  the  spiritual  aspects  of  recreation.  He  will  not  at- 


THE  VILLAGE  471 

tempt  to  make  social  standards  for  his  fellows  except  as  he  can 
present  a  vision  of  normal  life  compelling  in  its  attractiveness. 
But  on  the  other  hand,  and  equally,  the  most  idealistic  and  spon- 
taneous community  movements  will  wander  far  without  a  well 
planned  physical  basis  of  town  life ;  without  a  well  ordered  eco- 
nomic program  through  which  people  can  win  a  livelihood  and 
pay  the  cost  of  their  collective  enterprises ;  without  a  firm  basis 
in  human  health  through  the  facilities  of  public  safety  and  sani- 
tation; and  without  a  substantial  though  flexible  moral  frame- 
work within  which  individual  destinies  may  be  wrought  out.  On 
these  greatest  civic  commandments  hang  all  the  law  and  the 
prophets  of  community  welfare. 


CIVIC  IMPROVEMENT  IN  VILLAGE  AND  COUNTRY  * 

FRANK  A.   WAUGH 

THE  rural  population  of  the  United  States  has  always  been 
noted  for  its  public  spirit  and  patriotism.  At  the  same  time,  it 
has  been  recognized  that  the  farmers  themselves  have  benefited 
least  from  their  own  public  spirit.  They  have  generally  been 
unable  to  act  in  their  own  interests.  For  this  reason,  rural  com- 
munities should  give  special  heed  to  the  modern  movement  for 
civic  improvement. 

Civic  improvement  may  be  accepted  as  a  convenient  term  to 
designate  all  efforts  made  toward  the  betterment  of  the  physical 
conditions  of  the  community.  It  refers,  therefore,  especially,  to 
those  matters  in  which  the  public  is  interested.  Some  of  the 
important  items  in  the  physical  equipment  for  community  life 
are: 

(1)  Roads  and  streets,  including  bridges,  street  railways, 
and  street  trees. 

(2)  Public  grounds,  such  as  parks,  commons,  lakes,  water- 
fronts, and  cemeteries. 

(3)  Public  and  quasi-public  buildings,  such  as  school  houses, 
town  halls,  libraries  and  churches. 

i  Adapted  from  Extension  Circular,  No.  11,  Mass.  Agricultural  College, 
Amherst,  March,  1917. 


472  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

(4)  Public  recreation  facilities,  especially  playgrounds. 

(5)  Public  service  equipment,  such  as  telephone  lines,  elec- 
tric light  lines,  railway  stations  and  grounds. 

(6)  Private    grounds — inasmuch    as    the    improvement    of 
private  grounds  adds  greatly  to  the  attractiveness  of 
any  community. 

Civic  improvement  then  is  an  enterprise  applicable  to  cities, 
villages,  or  country  districts,  in  fact  to  every  civilized  commun- 
ity. Inasmuch  as  the  great  cities  possess  an  undue  proportion 
of  the  wealth  and  initiative  of  the  nation,  they  may  be  expected 
to  take  care  of  their  own  interests  along  these  lines.  Country 
districts  and  rural  villages,  however,  have  equal  need  to  im- 
prove to  the  utmost  their  physical  surroundings.  The  country 
as  well  as  the  city  needs  good  roads,  suitable  public  grounds, 
modern  school  buildings,  libraries  and  churches,  and  all  the  im- 
proved equipment  of  twentieth  century  civilization. 

It  is  the  purpose  of  civic  improvement  to  achieve,  as  rapidly 
as  practicable,  every  possible  advance  in  the  community  equip- 
ment as  already  denned.  These  improvements  can  be  secured 
by: 

(1)  Informing  the  public  as  to  present  conditions,  needed 
improvements,  and  means  of  securing  the  same. 

(2)  Securing  professional  and  technical  advice  on  pending 
improvements. 

(3)  Foreseeing  and  planning  ahead  for  coming  changes,  thus 
avoiding  expensive  mistakes  and  reconstructions. 

(4)  Adopting  definite  and  coordinated  plans  for  community 
betterment. 

(5)  Forming  improvement   programs   according  to   which 
successive  enterprises  are  taken  up  in  an  agreed  and 
logical  order. 

(6)  Assigning  particular  enterprises  to  particular  groups  or 
organizations,  e.g.  the  Grange  may  assume  responsibility 
for  the  roads,  the  Woman's  Club  for  the  school  houses 
and  playgrounds,  one  church  for  the  public  cemetery, 
another  for  the  town  common,  etc. 

Civic  improvement,  therefore,  is  not  a  newfangled  luxury, 
not  a  new  means  of  spending  public  money,  but  a  means  of 


THE  VILLAGE  473 

economizing  money.  At  the  same  time,  it  is  expected  to  ac- 
complish substantially  better  results  for  the  community. 

Civic  improvement  usually  succeeds  best  under  the  direction 
of  some  live,  local  organization.  This  may  be  a  village  improve- 
ment society,  or  it  may  be  some  association  which  exists  pri- 
marily for  another  purpose  but  which  undertakes  also  to  assist 
in  the  physical  upbuilding  of  the  community  in  which  it  lives. 
The  work  in  some  towns  has  been  definitely  undertaken  by  the 
Grange,  though  seldom  with  a  sufficiently  comprehensive  plan. 
In  some  communities,  it  has  been  successfully  prosecuted  by 
women's  clubs.  Where  no  organization  already  exists,  or  where 
no  existing  organization  is  ready  to  take  up  the  work,  the  best 
plan  is  often  to  form  a  central  committee  or  federation  com- 
posed of  delegates  from  existing  organizations,  such  as  lodges, 
churches,  women's  clubs,  men's  clubs,  etc.  Under  recent  Massa- 
chusetts legislation  the  formation  of  a  town  planning  board  has 
come  to  be  one  of  the  best  methods  of  securing  permanent  re- 
sults. Whatever  local  organization  may  be  in  charge  of  the  work, 
outside  advice  and  expert  assistance  should  be  frequently  called 
in.  This  is  highly  important. 

As  the  bulk  of  civic  improvement  is  applied  to  public  works, 
and  as  the  whole  of  it  is  designed  for  the  public  good,  the  bills 
should  be  paid  chiefly  from  the  public  treasury.  An  indispen- 
sable part  of  a  civic  betterment  campaign  is  to  see  that  public 
money  is  wisely  and  honestly  used.  The  immediate  contingent 
expenses  of  the  village  improvement  society  may  be  met  by 
private  contributions,  by  fairs  or  entertainments,  or  by  any 
means  most  acceptable  to  the  community. 

Commonly  the  leading  problems  presented  in  a  community 
improvement  program  are  as  follows:  (a)  approaches,  (b) 
streets,  including  trees,  (c)  civic  centers,  (d)  commons,  (e) 
public  buildings,  (f)  playgrounds,  (g)  private  grounds,  (h) 
maintenance.  A  full  discussion  of  all  these  problems  would  re- 
quire an  entire  volume,  but  the  main  issues  may  be  pointed  out 
briefly  herewith. 

Every  town  and  every  rural  district  should  have  suitable  means 
of  access.  We  hear  a  great  deal  nowadays  of  isolated  communi- 
ties, meaning  those  which  are  hard  to  reach.  Easy  access  comes 
by  well-kept  roads,  by  well-managed  trolley  lines,  or  by  rail- 


474  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

roads.  The  entrance  to  a  village  or  country  district  should  be 
direct,  inviting,  and  hospitable.  The  front  door  to  a  town  should 
have  the  same  qualities  as  the  front  door  of  one's  own  home. 

Good  roads  are  a  primary  part  of  civic  betterment,  and  the 
campaign  for  good  roads  is  perennial.  Better  methods  of  road 
building  are  needed,  and  more  permanent  roads  are  especially 
desirable.  In  many  cases,  roads  and  streets  should  be  relocated 
before  permanent  improvements  are  made.  Such  relocations 
should  secure  more  direct  lines  and  easier  grades.  The  work  of 
the  Massachusetts  Highway  Commission  has  developed  some 
striking  examples  of  improvement  by  relocation.  Many  similar 
improvements  can  be  secured  by  the  towns  themselves,  if  only 
proper  thought  is  given  to  the  matter. 

In  Massachusetts,  every  town  should  have  a  tree  warden,  and 
should  make  sure  that  he  is  a  competent  man  and  that  he  at- 
tends to  his  work.  In  the  face  of  the  unusual  pests  which  we 
have  to  meet,  the  salvation  of  street  trees  can  be  secured  only  by 
heroic  efforts.  It  is  depressing  to  think  what  our  village  streets 
and  country  lanes  would  be  like,  should  the  street  trees  disap- 
pear. The  best  modern,  scientific  care  should  be  given  to  pre- 
serve the  trees  now  standing,  and  at  the  same  time  annual  plant- 
ings of  young  trees  should  be  made  to  make  good  the  unavoid- 
able losses. 

The  villages  are  the  natural  centers  of  political,  business  and 
social  life  in  New  England  communities.  They  should  be  worthy 
of  such  an  important  office.  Moreover,  at  such  centers  should  be 
grouped  the  buildings  which  represent  the  public  life  of  the 
community,  such  as  town  hall,  library,  school-houses,  post-office, 
etc.  Substantial  advantages  are  gained  by  grouping  these  build- 
ings instead  of  scattering  them.  In  general,  the  best  arrange- 
ment is  to  have  them  front  upon  the  town  common,  but  never 
should  they  be  placed  upon  the  Common  itself. 

The  small  central  greens  located  in  the  hearts  of  many  New 
England  villages  are  a  public  asset  of  the  highest  value.  They 
should  be  most  jealously  guarded.  They  should  be  well  kept, 
in  every  particular.  It  is  especially  important  as  a  general  prin- 
ciple that  no  architectural  or  ornamental  construction  of  any 
kind  should  be  permitted  on  the  Common.  Public  buildings  are 
particularly  damaging,  but  neither  is  the  Common  any  place  for 


THE  VILLAGE  475 

any  kind  of  fountain,  statue,  or  bandstand.  Such  ornaments  or 
conveniences  may  often  be  located  advantageously  on  the  street 
margin  or  extreme  outer  angle  of  the  town  common,  but  under 
no  circumstances  should  they  be  placed  on  the  Common  itself. 
Mistake  is  very  common  in  this  matter. 

Every  effort  should  be  made  to  secure  public  buildings  of  the 
best  character.  Every  town  hall  and  every  library  ought  to  be 
something  which  the  community  can  be  proud  of.  A  public 
building  which  is  a  public  shame  is  a  constant  influence  to  de- 
grade the  spirit  of  the  community.  The  effort  for  good,  attrac- 
tive, dignified,  and  even  beautiful  public  buildings  needs  to  be 
directed  especially  to  the  school-houses.  Every  school-house 
ought  to  set  a  good  example  daily  to  the  school  children.  Un- 
fortunately, many  school-houses  are  cheap,  shabby,  and  even 
dirty. 

Country  villages  and  rural  communities  generally  are  notably 
lacking  in  playgrounds.  There  is  no  space  reserved  where  boys 
may  play  ball  without  trespassing  on  private  property.  Even 
the  school-houses  are  insufficiently  provided  with  play  room  out 
of  doors.  There  ought  to  be  ample  room  and  encouragement  for 
play  in  the  country.  In  this  way,  one  incentive  which  young 
people  find  for  going  to  the  city  would  be  materially  weakened. 

When  private  lawns  are  well  kept,  gardens  made  attractive, 
and  grounds  generally  beautified,  the  public  enjoyment  is  greatly 
increased.  Nothing  does  more  toward  making  a  town  attractive 
than  to  have  the  private  grounds  improved.  Such  garden  im- 
provements may  be  promoted  by  the  village  improvement  society 
through  offering  prizes,  the  arrangement  of  special  school  instruc- 
tion, and  by  many  other  means.  This  is  an  important  line  of 
civic  improvement  work. 

The  most  important  things  in  housekeeping  are  cleanliness 
and  good  order;  likewise,  the  most  important  things  in  commun- 
ity life  are  cleanliness  and  good  order.  The  streets  and  public 
places  should  be  kept  clean, — the  grass  mown,  weeds  cut  out,  and 
everything  kept  in  its  place.  The  common  should  not  be  allowed 
to  accumulate  Sunday  papers,  nor  the  cemetery  be  allowed  to 
grow  up  to  brush.  In  fact,  this  regular  routine  of  keeping  clean 
should  reasonably  occupy  a  large  proportion  of  the  time,  efforts 
and  funds  at  the  disposal  of  any  improvement  organization. 


476  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


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Gillin,  S.  Y.  Community  Development  and  the  State  University. 
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Hart,  Joseph  K.  Educational  Resources  of  Village  and  Rural  Com- 
munities. Macmillan,  New  York,  1913. 

Hartman,  Edward  T.  Village  Problems  and  Characteristics.  Annals, 
40:234-243,  March,  1912. 

Maine,  Henry  J.  S.  Village  Communities  in  the  East  and  West.  Holt, 
N.  Y.,  n.  d. 

Masters,  Edgar  L.  The  Spoon  River  Anthology.  Macmillan,  New 
York,  1915. 

McVey,  Frank  L.     The  Making  of  a  Town.     McClurg,  Chicago,  1913. 

Nolan,  John.  Comprehensive  Planning  for  Small  Towns  and  Villages. 
Bui.  16,  American  Unitarian  Assn.,  Boston. 

Origin,  Organization  and  Influence  of  the  Towns  of  New  England. 
Proceedings  Mass.  Hist.  Society,  Boston,  Jan.,  1866. 

Robinson,  Charles  M.  The  Improvement  of  Towns  and  Villages.  Put- 
nam, N.  Y.,  1909. 

Sims,  Newell  L.     A  Hoosier  Village.     Longmans,  N.  Y.,  1912. 

The  Rural  Community,  Ancient  and  Modern.     Chas.  Scribner's  Sons, 
N.  Y.,  1920, 


THE  VILLAGE  477 

Small,  A.  W.,  and  Vincent,  G.  E.     The  Village,  An  Introduction  to  the 
Study  of  Society.     Pp.  127-143,  American,  N.  Y.,  1894. 

Stubbs,  C.  W.     Village  Politics.     Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1878. 

Vogt,   Paul  L.     Introduction   to   Rural   Sociology.     Appleton,   N.   Y., 

1917. 

Village   Growth    and   Decline   in   Ohio.    American   City,   13 : 481-5, 
December,  1915. 

Waugh,  Frank  A.     Rural  Improvement.     Orange  Judd,  N.  Y.,  1914. 


CHAPTEE  XVII 

THE  SURVEY 

THE  SURVEY  IDEA  IN  COUNTRY  LIFE  WORK  * 

L.    H.    BAILEY 

THE  scientific  method  is  first  to  determine  the  exact  facts,  and 
then  to  found  the  line  of  action  on  these  facts.  That  is  the  way 
in  which  all  problems  must  be  attacked  if  real  and  permanent 
solutions  are  to  be  found.  The  scientific  method  in  engineering 
and  mechanics  and  biology  and  the  rest  has  been  responsible  for 
the  high  development  of  civilization  within  the  past  century. 
Similar  methods  must  be  applied  to  rural  work.  We  must  finally 
found  all  our  progress  in  rural  life  on  a  close  study  of  the  facts 
and  the  real  elements  in  the  situation,  in  order  that  we  may 
know  exactly  what  we  are  talking  about.  The  prevailing  politi- 
cal methods  have  been  the  antithesis  of  this ;  they  have  too  often 
been  the  methods  of  opportunism. 

Surveys  may  be  of  many  kinds  and  for  many  purposes.  Some 
of  them  may  be  for  temporary  uses  only,  in  the  nature  of  ex- 
plorations or  to  set  forth  a  particular  line  of  ideas.  The  real 
rural  survey  should  be  an  agency  of  record;  and  it  is  this  type 
of  effort  that  I  am  now  discussing. 

We  must  distinguish  sharply  between  such  a  survey,  made 
slowly  and  studiously,  and  an  inspection,  a  canvass,  or  a  cam- 
paign. These  lighter  efforts  may  be  very  necessary,  but  they 
usually  do  not  constitute  an  investigation,  and  they  belong  to 
a  different  order  of  inquiry. 

The  general  or  gross  reconnaisance,  to  bring  together  quickly 
for  comparison  the  outstanding  features  and  conditions  of  many 
communities,  may  have  much  value ;  but  it  should  be  undertaken 
only  by  persons  of  experience  in  detailed  survey-work  and  of 

i  Adapted  from  "York  State  Rural  Problems,"  Vol.  1:238-261.  J.  B. 
Lyon  &  Co.,  Albany. 

478 


THE  SURVEY  479 

ripened  judgment.  It  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  forms  of 
survey-work,  if  it  is  to  have  real  value.  It  must  be  much  more 
than  a  car-window  exercise.  When  properly  undertaken,  it  is  a 
new  and  useful  application  of  geography.  There  is  a  great  dan- 
ger that  the  overhead  reconnaisance  will  be  little  more  than  prac- 
tice in  aviation. 

If  a  survey  of  any  region  or  phase  is  to  be  a  record  of  fact, 
then  it  must  be  strictly  scientific  in  spirit,  as  I  have  already  in- 
dicated. It  must  discover  and  set  down  every  fact  of  signifi- 
cance, wholly  apart  from  any  prejudice  or  bias  in  the  mind  of 
the  observer:  the  fact  is  its  own  justification.  The  work  can- 
not be  as  precise  as  that  in  the  mathematical  and  physical 
sciences;  but  in  its  purpose  it  must  be  as  scientific  as  any  work 
in  any  subject. 

If  the  work  is  scientific,  then  it  will  not  be  undertaken  for 
the  purpose  of  exploiting  a  movement,  recruiting  an  associa- 
tion, spreading  a  propaganda,  advertising  a  region,  sustaining  a 
political  organization,  or  promoting  the  personal  ambition  of  any 
man.  There  is  indication  that  survey  work  will  soon  become 
popular ;  there  is  danger  that  it  will  be  taken  up  by  institutions 
that  desire  to  keep  themselves  before  the  public  and  by  locali- 
ties and  states  that  desire  to  display  their  advantages.  It  will 
be  easy  to  marshal  statements  and  arrange  figures,  and  par- 
ticularly to  omit  facts,  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  a  most  attrac- 
tive showing.  Even  some  honest  investigators  will  be  likely  to 
arrange  the  material  in  such  a  way  as  to  prove  a  point  rather 
than  to  state  the  facts,  unless  they  are  very  much  on  their  guard. 
If  country-life  surveys  have  possibilities  of  great  good,  they  have 
equal  possibilities  of  great  danger.  I  am  glad  that  the  move- 
ment is  going  slowly  at  first. 

The  intention  of  survey  work  in  agriculture  is  to  make  a  rec- 
ord of  the  entire  situation  and  to  tell  the  whole  truth.  Frag- 
mentary surveys  and  piece-work,  however  good  they  may  be  in 
themselves,  do  not  represent  the  best  effort  in  surveys.  Prac- 
tically all  our  surveys  have  thus  far  been  fragmentary  or  unre- 
lated, but  this  is  the  work  of  a  beginning  epoch.  We  shall  al- 
most necessarily  be  obliged  to  do-  still  further  fractional  and 
detached  work ;  but  it  is  time  that  we  begin  to  train  the  imagina- 
tion on  completer  and  sounder  programs.  The  whole  basis  and 


480  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

condition  of  the  rural  community  must  be  known  and  recorded. 
The  community  must  know  where  it  stands.  It  must  understand 
its  assets  and  its  liabilities. 

Survey  work  is  legitimate  wholly  aside  from  its  application. 
I  have  no  patience  with  the  doctrine  of  "pure  science," — that 
science  is  science  only  as  it  is  uncontaminated  by  application  in 
the  arts  of  life ;  and  I  have  no  patience  with  the  spirit  that  con- 
siders a  piece  of  work  to  be  legitimate  only  as  it  has  direct  bear- 
ing on  the  arts  and  affairs  of  men.  We  must  discover  all  things 
that  are  discoverable  and  make  a  record  of  it:  the  application 
will  take  care  of  itself.  The  application  of  science  lies  not  alone 
in  its  employment  in  particularities  here  and  there,  but  quite  as 
much  in  the  type  of  mind  and  the  philosophy  of  life  that  result 
from  it.  If  we  knew  our  exact  rural  status — in  materials,  ac- 
complishments and  deficiencies — we  should  by  that  very  fact  have 
a  different  outlook  on  the  rural  problem  and  a  surer  process  of 
attacking  it.  We  should  do  little  guessing.  We  should  correct 
many  vagaries  and  many  a  foolish  notion  to  which  we  now  are 
all,  no  doubt,  very  much  given.  We  should  not  be  obliged  to 
follow  blind  or  self-wise  leaders.  A  substantial  body  of  accu- 
mulated fact  would  set  bounds  to  the  promoter  and  the  agitator 
and  the  schemer. 

The  result  of  survey-work  in  agriculture  should  be  to  tie  the 
community  together.  Such  work  would  provide  a  basis  for  real 
judgment  on  the  part  of  every  intelligent  resident  of  the  neigh- 
borhood. One  interest  would  be  tied  up  with  another.  Apple- 
growing  would  not  be  distinct  from  wheat-growing,  or  church 
work  from  school  work,  or  soil  types  from  the  creamery  business, 
or  politics  from  home  life.  The  vicinage  would  be  presented  to 
the  citizen  as  a  whole.  Nothing,  in  my  opinion,  would  do  so 
much  to  develop  pride  of  neighborhood,  local  patriotism,  and 
community  common  sense  as  a  full  and  complete  knowledge  of 
what  the  community  is  in  its  resources,  its  history,  its  folks,  its 
industries,  its  institutions,  and  its  tendencies. 

When  the  survey  idea  is  once  understood  and  begun,  every 
locality  will  desire  to  be  represented.  Certain  regions  will  de- 
velop full  surveys,  and  the  reports  will  be  standard ;  the  surveys 
of  intermediate  localities  may  not  need  to  be  so  elaborate  or 
minute. 


THE  SURVEY  481 

When  we  fully  understand  our  problem,  we  shall  make  our 
best  surveys  in  consecutive  order.  We  may  classify  all  phases 
of  survey-work  freely  under  three  groups — physical,  economic, 
social ;  and  the  order  of  the  surveys  should  preferably  follow  this 
sequence.  We  should  first  know  what  the  region  is — geography, 
physiography,  climate,  resources,  soils;  then  what  it  does — the 
farming,  the  industries,  the  markets,  the  business,  the  profit-and- 
loss ;  then  how  it  lives — its  people,  its  homes,  its  health,  its  insti- 
tutions, its  modes  of  expression,  its  outlook.  I  very  much  doubt 
the  lasting  value  of  surveys  of  church  or  school  or  particular 
crops  or  special  products  that  are  not  founded  on  a  good  knowl- 
edge of  the  physical  and  economic  conditions  of  the  region. 


FIVE  PRINCIPLES  OF  SURVEYS1 

PAUL   U.    KELLOGG 

FIRST  of  all,  the  survey  takes  its  unit  of  work  from  the  sur- 
veyor. It  has  to  do  with  a  subject  matter,  to  be  sure,  but 
that  subject  matter  is  subordinated  to  the  idea  of  a  definite  geo- 
graphical area.  It  is  quite  possible  to  carry  on  a  study  of  tuber- 
culosis, for  example,  as  a  piece  of  physiological  research,  or  as  a 
piece  of  sociological  research,  wholly  apart  from  where  it  occurs. 
But  just  as  geological  survey  is  not  geology  in  general,  but  the 
geology  of  a  given  mountain  range  or  water  shed,  so,  even  when 
a  special  subject  matter  is  under  study,  the  sociological  survey 
adds  an  element  of  locality,  of  neighborhood  or  city,  state  or 
region,  to  what  would  otherwise  pass  under  the  general  term  of 
an  investigation. 

And  when  the  subject  matter  is  not  specialized,  but  concerns 
the  more  intangible  "needs"  of  a  community,  the  survey  becomes 
necessarily  different  things  in  different  localities.  It  cannot  be 
thought  out  at  a  far-away  desk.  It  is  responsive  to  local  con- 
ditions ;  in  a  worn-out  country  district,  suffering  from  what  Pro- 
fessor Ross  calls  "folk-depletion,"  its  content  has  little  in  com- 
mon with  that  of  a  survey  in  a  textile  center,  tense  with  human 
activity,  and  dominated  by  its  terms  of  work. 

i  Adapted  from  "The  Spread  of  the  Survey  Idea,"  Proceedings  Acad.  of 
Political  Science,  Vol.  2,  No.  4,  July,  1912.  Columbia  Univ.,  N.  Y. 


482  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

In  the  second  place,  the  survey  takes  from  the  physician  his 
art  of  applying  to  the  problems  at  hand  standards  and  expe- 
rience worked  out  elsewhere.  To  illustrate,  if  your  pure  scien- 
tist were  studying  the  housing  situation  in  a  given  town,  he 
would  start  out  perhaps  without  any  hypotheses,  tabulate  every 
salient  fact  as  to  every  house,  cast  up  long  columns  of  figures,  and 
make  careful  deductions,  which  might  and  might  not  be  worth 
the  paper  they  were  written  on.  Your  housing  reformer  and 
your  surveyor  ought  to  know  at  the  start  what  good  ventilation 
is,  and  what  cellar  dwellings  are.  These  things  have  been 
studied  elsewhere,  just  as  the  medical  profession  has  been  study- 
ing hearts  and  lungs  until  they  know  the  signals  which  tell 
whether  a  man's  organs  are  working  right  or  not,  and  what  to 
look  for  in  making  a  diagnosis. 

In  the  third  place,  the  survey  takes  from  the  engineer  his 
working  conception  of  the  structural  relation  of  things.  There 
is  a  building  element  in  surveys.  When  we  look  at  a  house,  we 
know  that  carpenters  have  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  it,  and 
it  is  possible  to  investigate  just  what  the  carpenters  have  done; 
also  the  bricklayers,  the  steam-fitters  and  the  rest  of  the  building 
trades.  But  your  engineer,  like  your  general  contractor  and 
architect,  has  to  do  with  the  work  of  each  of  these  crafts  in  its 
relation  to  the  work  of  every  other.  So  it  is  with  a  survey, 
whether  it  deals  with  the  major  elements  entering  into  a  given 
community  which  has  structural  parts  of  a  given  master  prob- 
lem such  as  Dr.  Palmer  describes  in  his  survey  of  the  sanitary 
conditions  in  Springfield.  Only  recently  I  received  a  letter  from 
a  man  engaged  in  making  a  general  social  survey  of  a  manufac- 
turing town — a  so-called  survey.  He  did  not  think  that  it  was 
truly  a  survey,  nor  did  I,  because  out  of  the  scope  of  that  in- 
vestigation had  been  left  all  of  the  labor  conditions  in  the 
mills.  The  local  committee  had  been  fearful  of  raising  opposi- 
tion in  forceful  quarters.  Yet  these  labor  conditions  were  basic 
in  the  town's  life;  on  them,  for  better  or  worse,  hung  much  of 
the  community  welfare;  and  by  ignoring  them,  the  committee 
could  deal  with  partial  solutions  only.  It  was  as  if  a  diagnosti- 
cian in  making  his  examination  had  left  a  patient 's  stomach  out 
of  consideration  because  the  patient  was  a  dyspeptic  and  irri- 
table. They  had  violated  the  structural  integrity  of  their  survey. 


THE  SURVEY  483 

In  the  fourth  place,  the  survey  takes  from  the  charity-organ- 
ization movement  its  case-work  method  of  bringing  problems 
down  to  human  terms.  Death  rates  exemplify  human  units 
in  the  barest  essentials;  but  I  have  in  mind  a  more  developed 
unit.  Let  me  illustrate  from  the  Pittsburgh  Survey  in  the  pains- 
taking figures  we  gathered  of  the  household  cost  of  sickness — 
lost  wages,  doctor's  bills,  medicines,  ice,  hospitals,  funerals,  the 
aftermath  of  an  epidemic  in  lowered  vitality  and  lowered  earn- 
ings, household  by  household — not  in  sweeping  generalizations 
but  in  what  Mr.  Woods  called  "piled-up  actualities."  If  I  were 
to  set  one  touchstone,  more  than  another,  to  differentiate  the  true 
survey  from  social  prospecting,  it  would  be  this  case-work 
method.  In  employing  it  the  surveyor,  because  of  lack  of  means 
and  time,  must  often  deal  with  samples  rather  than  with  the 
whole  population  coming  within  the  scope  of  his  study.  These 
samples  may  be  groups  of  school  children ;  or  the  people  who  die 
in  a  certain  year ;  or  those  who  live  in  a  certain  ward.  The 
method  is  one,  of  course,  which  is  scientifically  justifiable  only 
so  long  as  those  who  employ  it  can  defend  their  choice  of  the 
sample  chosen,  and  show  where  it  does  and  does  not  represent 
the  entire  group. 

Under  this  head  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  survey  is  in  a  field 
friendly  to  what  we  have  come  to  call  municipal  research.  The 
latter  is  indebted  for  its  methods  of  unit-costs  and  efficiency  to 
the  accountants.  These 'methods  may  be  applied  to  city  budgets 
and  city  departments  as  an  integral  part  of  a  social  survey,  the 
distinction  between  the  two  movements  in  practice  being  perhaps 
that  the  one  is  focused  primarily  on  governmental  operations ;  the 
other  on  phenomena  imbedded  in  the  common  life  of  the  people. 

In  the  fifth  place,  the  survey  takes  from  the  journalist  the 
idea  of  graphic  portrayal,  which  begins  with  such  familiar  tools 
of  the  surveyor  as  maps  and  charts  and  diagrams,  and  reaches 
far  through  a  scale  in  which  photographs  and  enlargements, 
drawings,  casts  and  three-dimension  exhibits  exploit  all  that  the 
psychologists  have  to  tell  us  of  the  advantages  which  the  eye 
holds  over  the  ear  as  a  means  for  communication.  With  these 
the  survey  links  a  sturdy  effort  to  make  its  findings  have  less 
in  common  with  the  boredom  of  official  reports  than  with  the 
more  engaging  qualities  of  newspaper  "copy" — especially  that 


484  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

simplicity  of  structure,  tangible  framework,  and  readability 
which  American  magazine  men  have  developed  as  their  technique 
in  writing  for  a  democracy.  This  is  not  a  counsel,  bear  in  mind, 
of  flimsy  sensationalism;  although  those  who  have  matters  to 
conceal  seek  to  confuse  the  two.  A  startling  article  patched  up 
from  a  few  glints  of  fact  is  a  very  different  proposition  from  a 
crystal  set  in  a  matrix  of  tested  information. 

Underlying  this  factor  of  graphic  portrayal  is  the  factor  of 
truth;  truth  plus  publicity.  It  is  often  possible  to  work  out 
large  and  definite  reforms  internally,  by  getting  a  group  of 
forceful  men  around  a  table  and  convincing  them  that  so  and 
so  is  the  right  thing  to  do.  This  is,  I  take  it,  a  legitimate 
method  of  philanthropic  work  and  of  social  reform.  But  it  is 
not  the  method  of  a  survey.  The  survey's  method  is  one  of 
publicity;  it  is  another  and  separate  implement  for  social  ad- 
vance, and  its  usefulness  should  not  be  negatived  by  a  failure 
to  hold  to  its  distinctive  function.  The  philosophy  of  the  sur- 
vey is  to  set  forth  before  the  community  all  the  facts  that  bear 
on  a  problem,  and  to  rely  upon  the  common  understanding,  the 
common  forethought,  the  common  purpose  of  all  the  people  as 
the  first  great  resource  to  be  drawn  upon  in  working  that  prob- 
lem out.  Thus  conceived,  the  survey  becomes  a  distinctive  and 
powerful  implement  of  democracy. 


A  METHOD  OF  MAKING  A  SOCIAL  SURVEY  OF  A 
RURAL  COMMUNITY  * 

C.   J.    GALPIN 
AN   ANALYSIS   OF   A   RURAL   COMMUNITY 

What  Is  a  Rural  Community?  There  are  three  fundamen- 
tal types  of  association  in  well  developed  country  life:  homes, 
neighborhoods,  communities.  A  neighborhood  is  a  collection  of 
homes  having  one  or  two  important  common  interests  such  as  a 
district  school,  or  a  mill,  or  an  open-country  church.  The 
neighborhood  may  be  a  number  of  homes  somewhat  near  together 

1  Adapted  from  Circular  29,  the  UniversHy  of  Wisconsin  Agricultural 
Experiment  Station,  Madison. 


THE  SURVEY  485 

all  belonging  to  the  same  foreign  race,  such  as  a  German  settle- 
ment. A  specially  genial  hospitality  in  one  prominent  home 
may  kindle  the  spirit  of  neighbbrliness  in  homes  nearby  and 
give  name  to  the  neighborhood,  such  as  the  Brown  neighbor- 
hood. 

A  community,  on  the  other  hand,  is  made  up  of  all  the  homes 
which  try  to  meet,  in  connection  with  each  other  at  a  common 
center,  the  fundamental  common  needs,  such  as  food,  clothing, 
implements,  money,  high  school  education,  religious  instruction, 
amusement,  fraternal  organization.  The  center  of  the  commu- 
nity is  usually  a  village  ranging  in  population  from  300  to  3,000 
people  and  it  serves  a  community  area  ranging  from  16  to  100 
square  miles. 

The  people  living  in  the  village,  on  the  whole,  are  engaged  in 
business  mainly  to  supply  the  needs  of  the  outlying  farm  homes 
of  that  community.  The  village  center  is  the  pantry,  safe,  shop, 
medicine  chest,  play-house,  altar,  of  the  community  at  large. 
The  village  homes  in  thus  serving  the  scattered  homes  of  the 
rural  population  as  social  agents  of  trade,  education,  health, 
amusement,  etc.,  are  distinctly  a  part  of  the  country  community 
itself. 

Important  Social  Agencies.  In  every  rural  community  will 
be  found  from  ten  to  forty  different  organizations,  such  as 
schools,  churches,  library,  Sunday  Schools,  lodges,  study  clubs, 
breeders'  association,  band,  baseball  teams,  and  the  like.  These 
are  the  important  social  agencies  of  community  life.  A  club  or 
society  or  other  organization  is  a  social  machine  which  brings 
the  power  of  a  number  of  people  to  bear  all  at  once  on  an  im- 
portant common  interest,  and  brings  results  to  the  people  con- 
cerned which  no  one  of  them  could  get  by  acting  alone.  A  list 
of  the  permanent  organizations  found  in  a  community  will  show 
what  large  interests  are  considered  important  there,  and  will 
also  show  just  how  far  this  community  has  been  successful  in 
applying  the  associative  principle  to  its  common  life. 

A  Community  Photograph.  A  social  survey  is  an  attempt 
to  photograph,  so  to  speak,  the  community  so  as  to  show  every 
home  in  all  its  social  connections  with  all  other  homes  in  the  com- 
munity. A  glance  at  this  socialized  community  photograph  will 
reveal  the  lines  of  strong,  healthy  socialization  and  at  the  same 


486  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

time  disclose  the  spots  and  lines  of  feeble  association.  An  intel- 
ligent social  planning  for  the  community  can  be  based  on  the 
social  facts  thus  discovered. 

HOW   TO   TAKE  THE   SOCIAL   SURVEY 

Determine  the  Community  Boundary.  The  first  step  in  mak- 
ing the  survey  is  to  locate  your  rural  community  and  draw  the 
boundary  lines.  Begin  at  the  village  center  and  go  west  into 
the  open  country.  The  first  farm  home  goes  to  this  village  for 
trade,  doctor,  high  school,  church,  etc.  It  therefore  belongs  to 
this  community.  So  the  second  home  west,  the  third,  fourth, 
etc.  Finally  you  come  to  a  home  that  turns  the  other  way  to 
another  village  for  its  principal  needs.  This  home  does  not  be- 
long to  your  community.  Connect  with  a  line  all  the  most  dis- 
tant homes  in  each  direction,  that  you  find  turning  to  the  activ- 
ities in  your  village  center.  This  line  will  be  the  boundary  of 
your  community. 

Take  a  Home  Census.  The  next  step  is  the  taking  of  a  cen- 
sus of  every  farm  home  and  village  home  within  the  boundary 
line.  Use  the  "Rural  Home  Census"  blanks  furnished  by  the 
College  of  Agriculture  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin.  Every 
home  should  be  visited  for  this  purpose  by  some  careful  person. 
The  information  will  be  gladly  given  by  some  one  in  the  home. 
Every  fact  asked  for  is  practically  a  matter  of  public  knowledge 
and  a  source  of  some  pride.  Include  every  child  in  the  home 
and  every  hired  man  and  hired  woman  and  any  other  person 
permanently  residing  in  the  home.  The  value  of  the  census  will 
depend  upon  getting  every  home,  getting  the  facts  accurately, 
and  putting  these  facts  plainly  and  carefully  in  their  right 
places  on  the  census  sheet. 

Take  an  Organization  Census.  The  third  step  is  a  census 
of  every  organization  in  the  community.  Use  the  census  sheet 
furnished  by  the  College  of  Agriculture  of  the  University  of 
Wisconsin,  one  sheet  for  each  organization.  Include  every  dis- 
trict school,  every  other  school,  every  church,  Sunday  school, 
every  society  in  the  church  which  holds  separate  meetings,  such 
as  Brotherhoods,  Young  People's  Societies,  Ladies'  Aid  Socie- 
ties, Mission  Societies;  include  every  fraternal  order,  lodge, 
club  or  association  of  any  sort,  such  as  a  band,  singing  club, 


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THE  SURVEY  487 

amusement  club,  base  ball  club.  Omit  no  group  of  people  that 
have  a  name  and  regular  meetings  more  or  less  frequent.  Do 
not  fail  to  get  the  list  of  resident  members.  Value  here  will 
depend  upon  accuracy.  A  courteous  request  to  the  secretary 
of  each  organization  will  undoubtedly  be  responded  to  with  all 
the  facts  desired. 

Make  Community  Maps.  The  information  obtained  by  the 
home  census,  while  valuable  in  itself,  can  be  made  far  more 
useful  by  a  system  of  communitj^  maps.  Draw  a  map  of  your 
community  on  white  card  board  or  cloth-backed  paper  about 
forty  inches  by  thirty-six.  Put  in  all  the  roads  and  the  village 
center  limits.  Locate  every  farm  home  on  this  map  by  a  round 
black  dot  a  quarter  of  an  inch  in  diameter.  Make  a  separate 
map  of  the  village,  locating  all  homes  by  the  black  dot. 

Total  Socialization  Map.  Make  a  list  of  all  organizations  in 
the  community  as  found  by  the  organization  census.  Give  a  dif- 
ferent color  to  each  organization.  Then  make  little  round  seals 
one  quarter  of  an  inch  in  diameter  out  of  colored  papers  of  these 
same  colors.  Take  one  farm  home  census  sheet  at  a  time,  and 
see  what  organizations  are  represented  in  this  home.  Stick 
one  seal  to  the  edge  of  the  black  dot  locating  the  home,  to  rep- 
resent connection  with  an  organization  which  has  one  or  more 
members  in  this  home — only  one  seal,  however  many  the  mem- 
bers. Then  to  the  outer  edge  of  this  seal  stick  one  more  seal 
representing  the  next  organization  found  in  the  home,  and  so 
on,  until  you  have  a  line  of  seals  of  different  colors  on  the  map, 
which  shows  at  a  glance  exactly  what  organizations  have  mem- 
bership in  this  home.  Treat  each  farm  home  in  the  same  way, 
and  the  result  will  be  a  community  map  showing  the  total  so- 
cial connections  of  all  the  farm  homes.  Proceed  in  the  same 
way  with  the  village  map,  and  the  two  maps  side  by  side  will 
show  the  total  social  relations  of  all  homes  in  the  community. 

A  Tenant  and  Owner  Map.  On  another  map  containing  all 
the  farm  homes,  you  can  attach  seals  of  one  color  for  tenants 
and  seals  of  another  color  for  owners  occupying  the  farm.  This 
will  show  at  a  glance  the  situation  of  the  tenant  problem. 

School  Maps.  An  interesting  map  can  be  made  showing  all 
the  homes  having  some  children  of  graded  school  age  not  in 
school  along  with  those  homes  where  such  children  are  all  in 


488  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

school.     In  the  same  manner  a  map  can  be  made  showing  the 
extent  to  which  the  homes  make  use  of  the  high  school. 

A  Sunday  School  Map.  A  map  can  be  made  showing  homes 
containing  children  going  to  school  but  not  to  Sunday  school, 
along  with  those  containing  children  all  going  to  Sunday  school. 

Possible  Maps. 

A  Newspaper  Map. 

A  Magazine  Map. 

Community  Events  Map. 

Library  Map. 

Homes  With  and  Without  Children. 

Foreign  Born  Map. 

Hired  Help  Map. 

Combination  Maps.  Perhaps  the  most  valuable  kind  of  map 
is  made  by  the  combination  of  one  set  of  facts  about  each  home 
with  another  set  of  facts.  For  example,  a  certain  colored  seal 
may  be  given  to  residence  of  a  home  in  the  community  for  a 
period  of  at  least  five  years.  Give  a  colored  seal  to  church  mem- 
bership (whatever  the  particular  denomination).  Then  com- 
bine in  one  map  these  two  seals.  The  result  will  show  whether 
churches  have  been  making  their  normal  appeal  to  the  more 
recent  comers  into  the  community.  A  score  or  more  of  such 
important  combination  maps  are  possible. 

Make  an  Organization  Chart.  An  interesting  and  instruc- 
tive comparative  table  can  be  made  of  all  the  different  organiza- 
tions in  your  community.  Follow  the  divisions  called  for  in 
the  organization  census  sheet,  including  value  of  equipment 
and  annual  expenses,  putting  total  number  of  members  in  place 
of  actual  list  of  members. 

Results  to  be  Expected  from  a  Social  Survey.  What  is  the 
use  of  such  a  social  survey?  This  is  the  first  reflective  ques- 
tion every  one  will  ask,  and  rightly  so.  In  the  first  place,  it  is 
plain  that  a  social  survey  is  nothing  but  an  inventory  of  the 
important  social  activities  of  the  community,  so  displayed  that 
everybody  can  see  just  how  far  every  home  is  participating  in 
the  social  life  of  the  community. 

The  first  thing  disclosed  will  be  the  socially  isolated  homes 


THE  SURVEY  489 

neglected,  overlooked,  or  indifferent.  This  disclosure  will  be 
useful  to  every  organization  and  to  every  citizen  seeking  to  in- 
crease social  acquaintance  and  interest  in  the  community  en- 
terprises. 

The  next  thing  will  be  questions  of  all  sorts  on  the  part  of 
everybody,  such  as,  "Why  are  so  few  tenants  in  our  organiza- 
tions?" "Why  are  there  no  women  south  of  the  river  in  the 
Women 's  Club  ? "  "  Why  is  the  library  not  used  by  the  people  in 
the  northeast  corner  of  the  community?"  "Why  are  there  so 
few  children  of  high  school  age  actually  in  the  high  school?" 
These  questions  are  vital  blows  upon  hard  problems,  and  are 
bound  to  crack  open  solutions. 

Perhaps  the  most  important  value  of  the  inventory  will  be 
the  necessity  of  looking  over  all  the  social  connections  of  all 
the  homes  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  whole  community. 
These  maps  are  community  photographs,  and  no  one  can  go 
away  from  a  study  of  the  whole  community  in  its  many  aspects 
without  having  his  views  modified  and  enlarged. 

There  at  once  emerges  this  great  question,  "How  does  the  so- 
cial situation  as  revealed  by  the  survey  of  all  associated  ac- 
tivities affect  the  whole  community;  and  what  shall  we  do  to 
change  this  situation  so  as  to  get  results  in  each  association 
better  adapted  to  promote  the  interests  of  the  entire  commun- 
ity?" 

With  the  organization  chart  before  us,  a  very  pertinent  ques- 
tion to  be  asked  each  organization  is  this:  "We  see  your  pur- 
pose, size,  property,  annual  budget,  now  what  are  you  doing,  over 
and  above  work  for  your  special  group  of  people,  for  this  whole 
community  whose  prosperity  sustains  and  floats  your  enter- 
prise?" A  good  answer  to  this  question  is  due  from  each  or- 
ganization. 

Further  questions  will  surely  arise:  "How  can  all  these  im- 
portant social  machines  in  the  community  unite  their  forces 
more  closely  in  promoting  the  legitimate  social  interests  and  in 
meeting  the  various  social  needs  of  the  whole  community?" 
"Can  a  united  social  front  be  presented  on  .occasions ?" 

It  may  become  plain  from  the  survey  that  some  important  in- 
terest of  the  community  has  no  "social  machine"  at  work  in 
its  behalf.  Here  then  will  be  a  chance  to  balance  up  the  as- 


490  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

sociated  forces  by  introducing  a  new  force  in  behalf  of  a  more 
symmetrical  and  wholesome  country  life. 

It  is  sufficient  justification  for  a  community's  taking  a  sur- 
vey and  inventory  of  its  social  forces  and  assets,  if  the  survey  is 
calculated  to  prompt  these  quickening  questions  and  lead  to 
a  readjustment  of  its  social  structure  so  as  to  produce  a  bal- 
anced social  life  that  will  fit  the  whole  community  and  meet  its 
larger  needs. 

Who  Shall  Take  the  Survey?  Any  group  of  community- 
minded  persons  in  the  community  can  undertake  this  interest- 
ing problem.  One  person  should  be  general  head  and  director. 
A  staff  of  five  or  ten  careful,  tactful  people  to  take  the  home 
census  and  organization  census  will  be  sufficient. 


THE  SOCIAL  ANATOMY  OF  AN  AGRICULTURAL 
COMMUNITY  1 

C.   J.   GALPIN 

A  NEW  rural  and  urban  point  of  view  has  grown  out  of  the 
attempt  to  answer  satisfactorily  the  following  series  of  questions : 
Is  there  such  a  thing  as  a  rural  community?  If  so,  what  are 
its  characteristics?  Can  the  farm  population  as  a  class  be 
considered  a  community?  Or  can  you  cut  out  of  the  open 
country  any  piece,  large  or  small,  square,  triangular,  or  irreg- 
ular in  shape  and  treat  the  farm  families  in  this  section  as  a 
community  and  plan  institutions  for  them?  Would  the  eighty- 
five  farm  homes  in  a  Norwegian  settlement,  bound  together 
by  one  church  organization,  form  a  community?  Has  each 
farm  a  community  of  its  own  differing  from  that  of  every 
other  ?  What  is  the  social  nature  of  the  ordinary  country  school 
district?  What  sort  of  a  social  unit  is  the  agricultural  town- 
ship? 

Is  it  possible  that  the  farms  are  related  to  the  village  clus- 
ters in  such  an  intimate  way  that  in  any  serious  treatment  of 

i  Adapted  from  Rural  Life,  pp.  70-87,  Century  Co.,  1918,  and  Research 
Bulletin  No.  34,  May,  1915,  Agricultural  Experiment  Station  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Wisconsin,  Madison. 


THE  SURVEY  491 

the  one  the  other  must  be  taken  into  account?  May  there 
not  be  an  important  social  anatomy  here,  which  needs  care- 
ful tracing  as  a  factor  in  any  rural  social  reform?  Have  we 
assumed  hitherto  that  the  interrelations  of  farm  and  village 
or  small  agricultural  city  are  all  on  the  surface  and  easily 
read?  Would  it  not  be  well,  before  imposing  a  redirected 
civilization  upon  the  country  man,  to  examine  more  minutely 
the  larger  movements  of  his  ordinary  life? 

A  recent  investigation  and  study  of  the  rural  population  in  a 
single  county  of  the  Middle  West, — Walworth  County,  Wiscon- 
sin,— a  study  covering  a  period  of  two  years,  was  prompted  by 
the  desire  to  answer  satisfactorily  the  foregoing  series  of  in- 
sistent questions. 

THE   METHOD 

Large  Working  Maps  of  the  County. — A  recent  atlas  of  Wal- 
worth County  was  taken  to  pieces,  the  township  maps  on  a 
scale  of  two  inches  to  the  mile  were  assembled  in  order,  thumb- 
tacked  on  a  large  board,  and  reproduced  on  tracing  cloth.  From 
this,  blue  prints  were  made  on  cloth,  freely  used  and  cut  into 
field  maps  as  required  for  surveys.  The  county  is  twenty-four 
miles  square. 

Assistants  Resident  in  Each  Village. — A  visit  was  made  to 
each  of  the  twelve  villages  and  cities  of  the  county,  and  an 
assistant  selected  to  aid  in  taking  the  survey.  Teachers,  high- 
school  principals,  clergymen,  bankers,  and  librarians  finally 
composed  the  staff  of  helpers. 

Getting  a  Land  Basis  Map.- — Each  village  or  city  was  to  be 
the  center  of  information  and  the  problem  in  general  was 
how  far  out  among  the  farm  homes  the  village  served  any 
social  purpose.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  village,  the 
problem  was  one  of  getting  at  the  land  area  of  village  influence ; 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  countryman,  it  was  learning  what 
farms  were  connected  with  the  same  village. 

A  visit  by  the  survey-maker  to  the  leading  dry  goods  mer- 
chant with  a  print  of  the  county  map  spread  before  him, 
got  an  answer  to  this  question:  "Which  are  the  farm  homes, 
north,  south,  east,  and  west,  that  come  farthest  to  trade  in 
your  village?"  The  result  would  be  a  tentative  rough  trade 


492  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

line  drawn  about  the  village.  Next  the  banker  would  indicate 
the  long-distance  farmers  coming  to  the  village  to  bank.  A 
visit  for  confirmation  would  be  made  at  the  village  milk  factory, 
grocery  stores,  and  the  like.  Then  a  local  map  was  cut  out  of 
the  county  map  one  mile  wider  and  longer  than  the  trial  limits 
set.  This  became  the  working  map  for  the  area  having  the  village 
as  center. 

Gathering  the  Facts. — The  first  requirement  was  the  name 
of  the  farmer  residing  on  each  farm  represented  on  the  map. 
In  some  cases  this  meant  the  gathering  of  600  names.  Usually 
the  banker,  real  estate  man,  livery  man,  and  physician  in  the 
village  could  give  the  bulk  of  the  names.  The  telephone  helped 
with  the  remainder.  The  result  was  a  card  catalogue  of  all 
farm  homes  on  the  map,  typewritten  on  the  schedule  blanks, 
one  blank  to  each  farm  home.  Each  farm  home  was  located 
on  the  schedule  by  township,  section,  and  number  in  the  section, 
to  correspond  with  the  spot  on  the  map  locating  the  home. 
With  this  package  of  names  and  the  map  as  a  guide  in  case  of 
doubt  as  to  the  man,  the  survey-maker  visited  the  leading  dry 
goods  merchants  and  got  an  hour  to  go  through  the  list,  and  ask 
the  question,  "Does  John  Doe  buy  dry  goods  regularly  in  this 
village  ? "  If  he  does,  a  cross  is  put  to  his  account  in  the  blank 
opposite  '  *  dry  goods. ' ' 

In  like  manner,  a  visit  is  made  to  each  grocery,  bank,  milk 
factory,  village  paper,  village  clergyman,  high-school  principal, 
library;  and  from  the  records  as  matters  of  fact,  and  not  of 
opinion,  it  is  indicated  on  the  blanks  which  homes  are  con- 
nected with  the  village  institutions.  In  case  of  the  high-school, 
the  question  was,  "Has  any  one  in  John  Doe's  family  attended 
the  high-school  during  the  last  three  years?  "  In  case  of  the 
paper,  "Does  John  Doe  take  your  paper?"  In  case  of  the 
church,  "Is  any  one  in  the  family  of  John  Doe  connected  with 
your  church?" 

Making  the  Final  Maps  of  the  County. — The  trade  map  was 
made  first  by  merging  the  dry  goods  and  grocery  maps  which 
nearly  coincided.  A  large  piece  of  corrugated  paper  board 
was  placed  under  a  copy  of  the  county  base  map.  Each  farm 
home  trading  at  Elkhorn,  for  example,  was  marked  and  then 
a  pin  stuck  in  the  spot.  A  thread  was  run  around  the  outside 


THE  SURVEY  493 

of  these  pins,  following  from  pin  to  pin  so  as  to  include  the 
least  amount  of  territory  while  enclosing  every  pin.  This 
thread  line  became  the  boundary  of  the  trade  zone.  After  the 
trade  zone  of  each  of  the  twelve  centers  was  marked  out  in 
this  way,  the  common  territory  where  zones  overlap,  with 
homes  trading  at  more  than  one  village  was  colored  alike  and 
called  neutral  ground.  Each  community  was  given  its  own 
color.  Then  round,  white  seals  were  used  to  designate  the 
homes  that  were  found  to  use  the  same  trade  center.  In  like 
manner  each  set  of  maps  was  made  in  water  colors. 

Trade  Zones. — Surrounding  each  village  or  city  center  is  an 
area  or  zone  of  land  including  farm  homes  that  trade  regularly 
at  the  center.  This  zone  is  irregular  in  shape,  due  to  such  fac- 
tors as  irregular  roads,  lakes,  marshes,  and  varying  distances 
of  the  trade  centers  from  one  another.  No  village  or  city  is 
found  in  the  county  without  its  farm  trade  zone,  and  within  this 
zone  the  number  of  farm  homes  closely  approximates  the  num- 
ber of  homes  at  the  center.  Accessibility  seems  to  be  the  largest 
factor  in  determining  the  regular  trade  center  for  any  farm 
home. 

The  trade  areas  of  adjacent  centers  have  a  tendency  to  overlap 
a  little,  producing  a  belt  from  one  to  two  miles  in  width,  of 
neutral  or  common  trading  territory.  Farmers  living  about 
half-way  between  centers  have  a  double,  or  in  some  cases,  triple 
trading  opportunity. 

These  trade  zone  lines  run,  moreover,  without  regard  to  the 
political  lines  of  the  township,  county,  and  state. 

The  farm  homes  in  the  same  trade  zone  use  the  four,  five,  or  six 
main  roads  leading  to  the  village  center  more  frequently  than 
any  other  extended  network  of  highways. 

These  families,  obviously,  have  at  least  a  passing  acquaint- 
ance with  one  another.  At  the  village  they  meet  casually,  at 
least,  with  farm  families  from  the  whole  zone.  This  trade  zone 
acquaintance  at  the  village  center  is  probably  wider  for  each 
farm  home  than  any  other  area  of  its  farm  acquaintance. 

The  trade  zones  of  a  county  are  subject  to  extension  and 
shrinkage  with  the  growth  of  village  centers  in  number,  size 
and  efficiency.  A  particularly  aggressive  business  spirit  in 
any  center,  shown  by  advertising,  efficient  methods  of  buying 


494  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

and  selling,  may  enlarge  the  boundaries  of  the  zone  somewhat 
or  at  least  widen  the  neutral  belt.  The  farm  homes  in  neutral 
territory,  which  are  so  situated  that  they  may  go  to  more  than 
one  trade  center,  hold  a  position  of  decided  advantage  in  de- 
termining trade  policies  of  merchants  in  two  or  more  competing 
small  cities. 

The  village  or  city  homes  and  the  farm  homes  in  the  same 
trade  zone  have  a  common  interest  in  the  same  trade  agents 
to  a  certain  degree,  perhaps  particularly  the  grocer,  dry- 
goods  merchant,  or  clothing  merchant.  Even  in  cases  where 
these  lines  are  specialized  for  farm  trade  or  village  trade,  it 
it  found  that  the  village  homes  will  be  patrons  of  the 
" farmers'  store,"  and  the  farm  homes  patrons  of  the  "city 
store." 

Banking  Zones. — As  the  trade  zone,  so  a  banking  zone  of 
farm  homes  surrounds  each  village  or  city  having  a  bank. 
The  size  of  the  banking  zone  compares  favorably  with  the 
size  of  the  trade  zone,  and  ignores  township,  county,  and 
state  lines;  has  a  belt  of  neutral  or  common  territory;  and 
reaches  about  half  way  to  the  adjacent  banking  centers.  The 
banks  are  used  all  but  universally  by  the  farmers,  and  appar- 
ently the  bank  acts  in  the  same  capacity  for  the  distant  farmer 
as  for  villager  or  city  dweller  living  within  the  same  banking 
zone. 

As  in  the  trade  zones,  farm  homes  in  the  same  banking 
zone  use  frequently  the  same  roads,  are  under  the  operation 
of  the  same  factors  of  efficiency  and  integrity  in  bank  man- 
agement ;  village  homes  and  farm  homes  in  the  village  bank 
zone  have  an  identical  interest  in  bank  control  and  policy; 
farmers  in  the  neutral  belt  occupy  positions  of  special 
power. 

Local  Newspaper  Zones. — Apparently  a  local  newspaper  is  a 
necessity  in  a  complete  civic  center.  The  paper  zone  conforms 
closely  in  shape  to  the  trading  and  banking  zones,  and  shows 
that  more  than  half  the  farm  families  are  subscribers  to  this 
agency  of  local  acquaintance  and  information.  Evidently  the 
village  editor  and  his  paper  serve  the  same  purpose  on  the  land 
as  among  the  clustered  roofs. 

Village  Milk  Zones. — The  milk  industry  is  organized  in  the 


THE  SURVEY  495 

county  very  generally  upon  the  neighborhood  scale,  with  small 
creameries  and  skimming  stations  scattered  through  the  open 
country.  However,  at  each  of  the  twelve  civic  centers  is  a 
creamery  or  condensery  run  on  a  scale  exceeding  that  of  the 
open  country  factory.  These  milk  zones,  while  following  the 
general  lines  of  the  trading  zone,  are  naturally  much  smaller. 
Only  a  little  neutral  territory  exists,  and  this  is  due  to  seasonal 
shifting. 

A  rapid  concentration  of  the  milk  industry  into  these  village 
factories,  condenseries,  and  shipping  plants  is  at  present  a 
marked  tendency.  A  few  years  may  bring  into  this  county 
the  auto-truck  milk  gatherer  for  each  of  the  large  village  fac- 
tories— an  agency  already  used  in  some  parts  of  Wisconsin. 
These  milk  institutions  at  the  civic  centers,  in  cases  operated 
and  largely  owned  by  outside  companies,  are  industrial  plants 
of  a  character  especially  blending  the  interest  of  the  villager 
with  that  of  the  farmer.  Not  only  the  few  main  roads  leading 
into  the  center  become  of  critical  interest,  but  every  road  in  the 
possible  milk  zone  takes  on  a  new  social  value — an  interest  which 
is  likely  to  overshadow  the  local  road  district  interest  or  even 
the  township  road  interest. 

Village  Church  Zones. — In  the  open  country  are  many  small 
churches  of  the  neighborhood  and  race  settlement  type.  Every 
hamlet  has  at  least  one  church.  Nevertheless  the  village  churches 
are  fairly  democratic,  and  are  attended  by  farm  families  going 
distances  of  five  and  six  miles.  It  seems  to  be  the  policy  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  church  in  this  county  to  locate  its  churches 
in  the  villages  and  cities,  a  fact  which  makes  several  of  the 
village  church  zones  of  considerable  size,  almost  equal  to  the 
respective  trading  zones. 

There  are  a  few  abandoned  open  country  churches  along  the 
roadsides;  but  the  neighborhood  country  churches  are  usually 
in  more  or  less  active  operation.  In  some  of  the  religious  bodies 
it  is  the  prevailing  practice  for  the  village  minister  to  serve 
also  one  or  two  open-country  charges,  a  custom  which  forms 
one  more  link  between  village  and  country  in  the  same  general 
trade  zone. 

At  certain  of  the  incomplete  civic  centers,  with  small  pop- 
ulation and  only  partial  trading  facilities,  there  is  a  single 


496  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

church,  usually  of  some  one  denomination,  but  generally  con- 
sidered as  a  "community  church."  A  resident  minister  is  in 
charge,  and  a  vigorous  social  life  is  in  progress.  The  favoring 
circumstance  for  this  aggressive  activity  seems  to  be  the 
blend  of  farm  and  hamlet  cooperation  in  a  single  church  parish. 

High-School  Zones. — Practically  every  farm  home  in  the 
county  is  easily  within  daily  reach  of  some  high-school.  Taking 
the  county  as  a  whole,  less  than  fifteen  per  cent,  of  the  farm 
homes  are  sending  children  to  high-schools. 

The  high-school  zones  are  not  only  much  smaller  than  the 
trade  or  banking  zones,  but  the  proportion  of  farm  homes 
within  the  zones  using  the  high-school  is  much  smaller  than 
that  using  the  shop  or  bank.  It  will  be  noticed  that  the  form 
of  this  zone  follows  the  general  lines  of  the  trade  zone.  Instead 
of  an  over-lapping  of  zone  lines  giving  a  belt  of  neutral  territory, 
there  appears  surrounding  every  zone  a  belt  of  homes  outside  the 
influence  of  any  high-school. 

With  all  the  general  deficiency  apparent  in  the  amount  of 
farm  use  of  these  nine  high-schools,  it  is  plain  that  a  fair  per- 
centage of  the  farm  families  within  two  miles  of  each  high-school 
recognizes  its  value.  The  character  of  the  high-school  as  an 
agent  in  idea-forming  and  association-making,  plays  a  won- 
derful part  at  the  adolescent  period  of  life,  in  democratizing 
the  children  of  the  farm  who  attend  and  the  children  of  the 
village.  It  would  be  difficult  to  overestimate  its  influence  as 
a  force  for  constructive  cooperation,  were  each  high-school  con- 
sciously controlled  in  adaptation  of  subjects  and  management  of 
courses  in  the  interest  of  those  living  upon  the  land  as  well 
as  of  those  living  in  the  small  city. 

Village  Library  Zones. — Four  fine  examples  of  the  institu- 
tional library  are  in  the  county.  The  privilege  of  free  use 
is  open  to  farm  families,  and  a  certain  considerable  number  of 
farm  homes,  in  fact,  thirty-one  per  cent,  of  all  farm  homes  within 
the  library  zones,  avail  themselves  of  this  privilege.  A  wider 
farm  use  of  the  high-school  would  doubtless  lead  to  a  wider  use 
of  the  library. 

The  School  Districts. — A  study  of  the  country  school  districts 
of  the  county  shows  the  fact  that  the  prevailing  scale  of  organ- 
ized farm  life  is  that  of  the  neighborhood.  The  school  house, 


THE  SURVEY  497 

an  open  country  church,  and  a  creamery  may  frequently  be 
found  together,  among  fifteen  to  thirty  families,  in  a  territory 
of  from  three  to  five  square  miles.  A  slight  tendency  to  consol- 
idate adjoining  school  districts  exists,  but  it  is  only  slight. 
There  seems  to  be  a  greater  tendency  to  enlarge  the  village  or 
city  districts  by  addition  of  farms. 

The  Actual  but  Unofficial  Community. — Eight  of  the  twelve 
civic  centers  of  Walworth  County  are  incorporated;  four  as 
cities  and  four  as  villages.  Officially,  that  is  legally,  the  in- 
corporated centers  are  treated  as  communities,  each  by  and 
for  itself.  The  foregoing  analysis  of  the  use  of  the  leading 
institutions  of  each  center  by  the  farm  population  discloses 
the  fact,  however,  that  these  institutions  are  agencies  of  social 
service  over  a  comparatively  determinable  and  fixed  area  of 
land  surrounding  each  center;  that  this  social  service  is  pre- 
cisely the  same  in  character  as  is  rendered  to  those  people — 
whether  artisans,  employees,  or  professional  persons — who  hap- 
pen to  live  within  the  corporate  limits  of  the  city  or  village; 
moreover  the  plain  inference  is  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  center 
are  more  vitally  concerned  in  reality  with  the  development 
and  upkeep  of  their  particular  farm  land  basis  than  with  any 
other  equal  area  of  land  in  the  state. 

It  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  avoid  the  conclusion  that 
the  trade  zone  about  one  of  these  rather  complete  agricultural 
civic  centers  forms  the  boundary  of  an  actual,  if  not  legal, 
community,  within  which  the  apparent  entanglement  of  human 
life  is  resolved  into  a  fairly  unitary  system  of  interrelatedness. 
The  fundamental  community  is  a  composite  of  many  expanding 
and  contracting  feature  communities  possessing  the  character- 
istic pulsating  instability  of  all  real  life. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 
SURVEYS 

Aronovici,  Carol.  Knowing  One's  Own  Community.  Bulletin  No.  20, 
Social  Service  Series,  Dept.  of  Social  and  Public  Service,  Ameri- 
can Unitarian  Association,  Boston,  n.  d. 

Bailey,  L.  H.  The  Survey  Idea  in  Country  Life  Work.  In  his  York 
State  Rural  Problems,  Vol.  I,  Lyon,  Albany,  1913. 

Bailey,  Wm.  B.     Modern  Social  Conditions.     Century,  N.  Y.,  1906. 

Boardman,  John  R.     The  Rural  Social  Survey,  N.  Y.,  1914. 


498  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Brinton,  W.  C.  Graphic  Methods  for  Presenting  Facts.  The  Engi- 
neering Mag.  Co.,  N.  Y.,  1914. 

Brittain,  H.  L.  Report  of  the  Ohio  State  School  Survey  Commission. 
Published  by  State  of  Ohio,  Columbus,  1914. 

Carroll,  C.  E.  The  Community  Survey  in  Relation  to  Church  Effi- 
ciency. Abingdon  Press,  N.  Y.,  1915. 

Eastman,  E.  Fred.  The  Minister's  Use  of  the  Survey.  Men  and  Re- 
ligion Messages, — Rural  Church,  VI :  166-177,  Association  Press, 
N.  Y.,  1912. 

Elmer,  Manuel  C.  Technique  of  Social  Surveys.  World  Company, 
Lawrence,  Kansas,  1917. 

Galpin,  C.  J.  A  Method  of  Making  a  Social  Survey  of  a  Rural  Com- 
munity. Agricultural  Experiment  Station,  Univ.  of  Wisconsin, 
Circular  29,  Madison,  1912. 

The  Social  Anatomy  of  an  Agricultural  Community,  Research  Bul- 
letin, 34,  Agricultural  Experiment  Station,  Univ.  of  Wisconsin, 
Madison,  1915. 

Galpin,  C.  J.,  and  Davies,  G.  W.  Social  Surveys  of  Rural  School 
Districts,  What  they  are  and  how  they  are  made.  Agricultural 
Experiment  Station,  Univ.  of  Wisconsin,  Circular  51,  Madison, 
1914. 

Gill,  Charles  0.,  and  Pinchot,  Gifford.  The  Country  Church.  Mac- 
millan,  N.  Y.,  1913. 

Gillette,  J.  M.  Rural  Social  Surveys.  In  Constructive  Rural  So- 
ciology, pp.  281-292,  Sturgis,  N.  Y.,  1915. 

Gillin,  J.  L.  Application  of  the  Social  Survey  to  Small  Communities. 
Amer.  Journal  of  Sociology,  17 :  647-8,  Nov.,  1911. 

Haney,  L.  H.,  and  Wehrwein,  G.  S.  A  Social  and  Economic  Survey 
of  Southern  Travis  County,  Texas.  Univ.  of  Texas,  Bui.  No.  65, 
Austin,  1916. 

Hart,  Joseph  K.  Educational  Resources  of  Village  and  Rural  Com- 
munities. Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1913. 

Johnson,  0.  M.,  and  T)adesma,  A.  J.  An  Agricultural  Survey  of 
Brooks  County,  West  Va.  Experiment  Station  Bui.  No.  153, 
Morgantown,  1915. 

King,  W.  L     Elements  of  Statistical  Method.     Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1912. 

Kirkpatrick,  E.  A.  Fundamentals  of  Sociology,  pp.  215-276.  Hough- 
ton,  Boston,  1916. 

Mayo-Smith,  Richmond.     Science  of  Statistics.     2  vols.  Macmillan,  N. 
'  Y.,  1899. 

McClenahan,  Bessie.  The  Social  Survey.  Univ.  of  Iowa,  Extension 
Bui.  No.  26,  Iowa  City,  1916. 

Richmond,  Mary  E.  Social  Diagnosis.  Russell  Sage  Foundation,  N. 
Y.,  1917. 

Secrist,  Horace.  An  Introduction  to  Statistical  Methods.  Macmillan, 
N.  Y.,  1917. 

Sims,  N.  L.  A  Hoosier  Village — A  Sociological  Study  with  Special 
Reference  to  Social  Causation.  Columbia  Univ.  Studies,  Vol.  46, 
No.  4. 

Taft,  Anna  B.  Community  Study  for  Country  Districts.  Presbyter- 
ian Dept.  for  Missionary  Education,  N.  Y.,  1912. 


THE  SURVEY  499 

Taylor,  Carl  C.  The  Social  Survey,  Its  History  and  Methods.  Univ. 
of  Mo.  Bui.,  Vol.  20,  No.  28,  Social  Science  Series  3,  Oct.,  1919. 

Thompson,  C.  W.  Rural  Surveys.  Pub.  Am.  Sociological  Soc., 
11:129-134,  1916. 

Thompson,  C.  W.,  and  Warber,  G.  P.  Social  and  Economic  Survey 
of  a  Rural  Township  in  Southern  Minnesota.  Univ.  of  Minnesota, 
Studies  in  Economics,  No.  1,  Minneapolis,  1913. 

Von  Tungeln,  Geo.  H.,  Brindley  and  Hawthorne.  A  Rural  Social  Sur- 
vey of  Orange  Township,  Black  Hawk  Co.,  Iowa.  Bui.  No.  184, 
Ag.  Ex.  Station,  Iowa  State  College  of  Agriculture,  Ames,  Iowa, 
Dec.,  1918. 

The  Results   of   Some   Rural    Social   Surveys   in   Iowa.     Pub.   Am. 
Sociological  Soc.,  11 : 134-163,  1916. 

Warren,  G.  F.,  and  others.  An  Agricultural  Survey — Townships  of 
Ithaca,  Dryden,  Danby,  and  Lansing,  Tompkins  County,  N.  Y. 
Bull.  295,  Cornell  Univ.,  Agricultural  Experiment  Station,  Ith- 
aca, N.  Y.,  1911. 

Weld,  L.  D.  H.  Social  and  Economic  Survey  of  a  Community  in  the 
Red  River  Valley.  Univ.  of  Minnesota,  Current  Problems,  No.  4, 
Minneapolis,  1915. 

Wells,  George  Frederick.  A  Social  Survey  for  Rural  Communities. 
N.  Y.,  1911. 

Wilson,  Warren  H.  Surveys  Made  by  the  Presbyterian  Board  of 
Home  Missions,  Dept.  of  Church  and  Country  Life,  N.  Y. 

Wilson,  Warren  H.,  and  others.  Rural  Survey  of  Lane  County,  Ore- 
gon, Board  of  Home  Missions,  Presbyterian  Church,  N.  Y.,  1916. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS 

A.    RURAL  ORGANIZATION 

RURAL  ORGANIZATION1 

K.  L.  BUTTERFIELD 

THE  PROBLEMS  OP  RURAL  IMPROVEMENT 

1.  In  methods  of  controlling  the  necessary  forces  and  ma- 
terials of  production. 

2.  In  farm  practice,  or  in  the  production  of  crops  and  animals. 

3.  In  methods  of  farm  management  and  farm  business. 

4.  In  methods  of  farm  organization. 

5.  In  farm  life. 

SOME   NECESSARY   ADJUSTMENTS 

1.  Among  the  farmers  themselves. 

2.  Between  the  interests  of  farmers  and  others. 

I.   THE    PROBLEM    OF    THE    BETTER    CONTROL    OF    THE    NECESSARY) 
FORCES    AND    MATERIALS    FOR    PRODUCTION 

1.  The  Control  of  the  Land  Itself. — Land  ownership  gives  the 
most   complete   control.     The   retired   farmer   has   less   control 
than  the  owner  who  works  his  own  farm.     The  absentee  landlord 
has  only  a  minimum  of  actual  control.     Land  may  be  owned  by 
the  state  and  leased  to  the  men  who  work  it.     We  must  learn 
very  soon  what  on  the  whole  Is  the  best  method  of  land  control 
in  order  that  both  farmers  and  consumers  may  have  the  largest 
possible  benefits. 

2.  Land  Acquirement. — Farmers    in    America    formerly   got 

i  Adapted  from  "The  Farmer  and  the  New  Day,"  pp.  40-56,  Macmillan, 
N.  Y.,  1919. 

500 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         501 

their  land  from  the  government.  This  is  no  longer  true  -to  any 
large  degree.  It  is  coming  to  be  difficult  for  the  young  farmer 
to  acquire  a  farm.  Only  two  solutions  are  apparent.  One  is 
for  the  government  itself  to  purchase  land  and  sell  it  to  new 
owners  individually  or  in  colonies  with  liberal  credit  and  easy 
payments;  or  for  large  groups  to  do  the  same  thing,  either  as 
private  corporations  for  gain  or  cooperative  land  societies. 

3.  Land  Rental. — Rental  under  right  conditions  may  secure 
very  effective  use  of  the  land.     Tenant  farming  does  not  tend 
as  a  rule  toward  building  up  permanent  farm  community  inter- 
ests.    Very  short  leases  are  disastrous  both  to  farming  and  to 
country  life.     Permanent  tenure  can  be  made  satisfactory  only 
when  the  tenant  is  given  a  share  in  permanent  improvements. 

4.  The  Control  of  Capital. — Need  for  capital  in  farming  is  rap- 
idly increasing  because  of  increased  cost  of  land,  need  of  land  im- 
provements by  drainage,  etc.,  larger  need  for  machinery  and 
other  equipment,  higher  cost  of  labor.     The  farmer  needs  both 
long  term  credit  and  short  term  credit,  the  one  for  land  purchase 
and  permanent  improvements,  and  the  other  in  order  to  take 
advantage  of  better  terms  in  securing  his  supply  of  seeds,  fer- 
tilizer, feeds.     Mercantile  or  store  credit  is  very  costly  in  in- 
terest and  should  be  abolished.     One  difficulty  in  securing  credit 
for  farmers  is  that  the  American  farmer  is  as  a  rule  unwilling 
to  become  a  party  to  a  plan  whereby  the  farmers  of  a  community 
collectively  become  responsible  for  the  debts  of  the  individuals 
of  the  community.     Farmers  have  collectively  enormous  assets 
which  ought  to  be  made  available  for  each  worthy  member  of  the 
partnership. 

5.  Control  of  the  Labor  Supply. — The  farmer  has  to  compete 
now-a-days  with  industry  for  his  labor,  in  the  matter  of  wages, 
housing,  hours.     One  of  the  biggest  problems  of  the  future  lies 
in  answering  such  questions  as  how  to  keep  labor  employed 
throughout  the  year;  how  to  educate  the  laborer  so  that  he  be- 
comes a  skilled  farmer ;  whether  women  in  America  will  do  more 
farm  work  than  formerly;  how  to  use  boy  labor  without  sacri- 
fice of  education;  the  relations  of  farmers  to  farm  labor  organ- 
izations;  and   how  to   encourage  the  farm  laborer  to  become 
eventually  a  farm  owner. 

6.  The  Control  of  Materials  and  Power. — Commercial  inter- 


502  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

ests  have  served  the  farmer  reasonably  well  in  supplying  seeds, 
fertilizer,  stock  feeds,  machinery,  but  only  to  a  small  extent  in 
supplying  power.  The  government  will  probably  have  to  inter- 
vene in  establishing  a  democratic  use  of  water  power  for  the 
making  of  electricity.  Farmers,  however,  will  need  to  cooperate 
much  more  freely  than  now  in  the  purchase  of  power,  as  well  as 
of  their  other  supplies. 

II.  THE    PROBLEM    OF    IMPROVEMENT    OF    FARM    PRACTICE,    OR    THE 

PRODUCTION    OF    CROPS    AND    ANIMALS 

1.  Improvement  of  the  Soil. — This  means  securing   greater 
depth  of  soil;  more  complete  friability;  more  adequate  control 
of  water  in  the  soil ;  proper  adaptation  of  special  crops  to  special 
soils;  prevention  of  plant  food  waste  and  erosion;  and  in  gen- 
eral, the  question  of  permanent  fertility. 

2.  The  Improvement  of  Crops,  by  getting  the  greatest  possible 
yields;  improving  the  quality  and  food  or  feed  value;  securing 
disease  and  drouth  resistant  varieties. 

3.  The  Improvement  of  Animals  in  size,  quality,  temperament, 
healthiness,  etc. 

III.  IMPROVEMENTS    IN    FARM    MANAGEMENT    AND    FARM    BUSINESS 

1.  The  Purchase  of  Supplies. — It  is  only  by  collective  or  co- 
operative purchase  of  supplies  and  equipment  that  farmers  can 
get  the  best  prices  and  terms.     So  long  as  the  individual  farmer 
buys  his  supplies  at  a  disadvantage,  he  is  economically  handi- 
capped. 

2.  Standardizing  the  Product. — The  greatest  single  difficulty 
which  the  individual  farmer  faces  is  due  in  part  to  the  wide 
variety  of  crops  grown  in  a  given  locality  and  to  a  great  vari- 
ation in  quality.     The  remedy  in  general  lies  in  inducing  farm 
communities  to   produce   fewer   things,   to   produce   those   for 
which  the   region  is  particularly   adopted,   and  then  through 
cooperation,  to  secure  proper  grading,  careful  and  honest  pack- 
ing, and  wherever  feasible,  proper  labeling. 

3.  In  the  Transportation  of  Products. — Good  roads  and  the 
motor  truck  will  play  a  rapidly  increasing  part  in  initial  trans- 
portation.    Rural  trolleys  will  help  to  a  growing  extent.     The 
main  dependence  for  standard  crops  is  the  railway  system.     One 
of  the  most  important  reforms  is  the  adjustment  of  freight  rates 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS        503 

as  between  the  long  haul  and  the  short  haul  in  order  that  both 
the  distant  producer  and  the  nearby  farmer  may  have  sub- 
stantial justice. 

4.  The  Problem  of  Storage.— The  purpose  of  storage  is  to  keep 
such  part  of  the  product  as  is  not  immediately  necessary,  until 
it  is  needed  by  the  consumer.     The  farmer  believes,  and  probably 
with  reason,  that  those  who  control  storage  facilities  exact  unfair 
toll  from  the  farmer.     The  difficulty  lies  less  in  dishonesty  than 
in  the  fact  that  the  whole  system  is  purely  a  profit-making 
affair.     The  storage  system  should  be  organized  and  controlled 
as  primarily  a  method  of  relating  supply  and  demand. 

5.  The  Selling  of  Crops. — In  case  of  fruits,  vegetables,  and 
poultry  products,  producer  and  consumer  may  be  brought  to- 
gether face  to  face  in  public  or  community  markets  where  they 
may  make  their  bargain.     For  most  crops,  the  middleman  is 
indispensable.     He    should    not    be    abolished    but    redirected. 
We  shall  never  have  satisfactory  methods  of  marketing  farm 
products  until  we  have  a  thoroughly  organized  group  of  pro- 
ducers, each  group  with  its  special  product,  dealing  directly  with 
well   organized  groups   of  consumers,   or  with  well   organized 
groups  of  middlemen  whose  activities  are  regulated  by  the  gov- 
ernment in  the  interests  of  both  producers  and  consumers. 

6.  The  Farmer's  Interest  in  Manufacture  and  Care. — The  con- 
servation and  processing  of  farm  products  has  gone  largely  into 
the  hands  of  commercial  concerns.     The  farmer,  however,  has 
a  moral  obligation  to  eliminate  all  wastes  on  the  farm  itself. 
Community   enterprises    looking    toward    the    manufacture    or 
preservation  of  certain  products,  both  for  use  in  the  community 
itself  and  as  a  business  venture,  will  probably  increase.     There 
is  a  vast  waste  in  double  transportation;  for  example,  wheat 
is  shipped  one  thousand  miles  for  milling  and  the  flour  is  brought 
back  to  the  farm  region  where  the  wheat  was  grown. 

7.  Protection  and  Insurance. — The  farmer  wages  a  constant 
battle  against  insect  pests,  diseases,  of  plants  and  animals,  un- 
favorable natural  conditions  such  as  weeds,  flood,  drouth,  frost, 
wind,  hail,  fire.     Widespread  education,  mutual  insurance  and 
cooperative  action  seem  to  be  the  main  solutions.     One  of  the 
biggest  problems  of  protection  is  whether  it  is  possible  to  insure 
the  farmers  to  some  extent  against  loss  due  to  inadequate  knowl- 


504  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

edge  of  market  conditions,  such  as  spoilage  in  food  products, 
forced  sales  of  products  due  to  lack  of  credit,  and  market 
gluts. 

8.  The  Reinvestment  of  Farm  Profits  is  not  as  yet  a  burning 
question  but  it  is  not  unimportant.  Why  can  not  farmers  utilize 
their  surplus,  when  they  have  it,  for  the  building  up  of  the  com- 
munity in  which  they  live  ? 

IV.    THE   PROBLEM   OF   THE  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   FARM 

1.  The  Farm  and  its  Equipment. — It  would  be  very  helpful 
to  have  a  standardization  of  farms  on  the  basis  of  the  most  eco- 
nomic type  and  size  of  farm  and  the  amount  of  capital  and  equip- 
ment in  stock  and  machinery  needed  to  operate  the  farm  to  best 
advantage 

2.  The  Permanent  Improvement  of  the  Farm. — How  can  the 
farmer  best  secure  a  gradual  improvement  of  his  stock,  complete 
a  system  of  under  drainage,  provide  economic  but  adequate  and 
convenient  buildings,  and  utilize  labor-saving  devices? 

3.  Bookkeeping    and   Accounting. — There    is    great    need    of 
adequate  records  and  accounts  simplified  so  that  the  average 
farmer  can  follow  the  plan.     There  are  really  two  problems, 
one  that  of  accurate  business  accounts  and  the  other  that  of 
proper  records  which  when  interpreted  will  help  the  farmer  to 
adjust  his  methods  of  management  to  the  securing  of  greater 
economies  of  time  and  labor. 

4.  The  Use  of  Labor. — How  may  labor  be  secured  at  any  price 
and  how  retained?     One  of  the  big  questions  is  how  to  employ 
during  the  winter  months  farm  labor  needed  only  during  the 
growing  season,  in  order  that  labor  may  be  satisfied  and  be  avail- 
able more  continuously  for  the  farmer. 

V.    THE  IMPROVEMENT   OF  FARM   LIFE 

Means  of  Communication.  It  has  been  said  that  the  problem 
of  the  city  is  congestion  and  the  problem  of  the  country  isolation. 
In  the  city  there  are  too  many  people  to  the  square  mile ;  in 
the  country  there  are  too  few.  Rural  free  mail  delivery,  the 
rural  telephone,  the  rural  trolley,  to  a  degree,  and  the  auto- 
mobile have  quite  changed  the  aspect  of  country  life.  The 
problem  is  not  yet  solved,  however,  the  greatest  difficulty  being 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         505 

that  of  getting  and  maintaining  at  reasonable  expense  a  complete 
system  of  good  highways,  that  reaches  practically  every  farmer. 
The  success  of  the  consolidated  school  and  of  the  community 
church,  as  well  as  economical  transportation  of  farm  products, 
hinges  on  this  issue. 

Home-making.  The  farm  home  is  intimately  attached  to  farm 
work.  It  must  contribute  to  the  profit  of  the  farm,  to  the 
physical  efficiency  of  the  members  of  the  family,  to  the  most  com- 
plete training  of  the  children  in  character  and  citizenship,  and 
make  itself  felt  in  the  upbuilding  of  a  satisfying  community. 
The  farmhouse  should  be  convenient  and  beautiful  within  and 
without.  It  is  possible  to  develop  a  system  of  home  manage- 
ment that  will  reduce  drudgery  and  encourage  the  life  of  the 
mind  and  the  spirit. 

Means  of  Education.  We  must  make  sure  that  the  rural 
school  gives  the  country  boy  and  girl  just  as  good  an  education 
for  life  either  in  country  or  in  city  as  is  given  to  the  city  boy 
and  girl.  Moreover,  the  country  school  should  contribute  more 
completely  to  the  education  of  the  adults  of  the  community. 
Ideally,  the  people  of  the  community  will  stay  in  school  all 
through  life.  We  must  maintain  a  system  of  agricultural  educa- 
tion, through  schools  and  colleges  and  experiment  stations  and 
extension  service  and  farm  bureaus,  that  will  reach  effectively 
and  practically  the  entire  farm  population.  We  should  develop 
the  habit  of  reading  and  study  with  a  better  system  of  rural 
public  libraries.  Continuation  schools  must  be  provided  for 
the  boys  and  girls  who  are  no  longer  all  the  time  in  school,  but 
who  ought  to  keep  up  their  schooling  much  longer  than  they  do. 
And  in  general,  we  must  stimulate  the  masses  of  farmers  to 
closer  study  not  only  of  their  own  problems,  but  of  the  problems 
of  the  New  Day. 

Rural  Government.  How  can  we  make  local  government  more 
efficient,  more  honest  ?  Probably  we  can  do  more  for  the  people 
of  the  community  through  the  local  machinery  of  government. 
We  already  support  schools  and  build  roads.  Can  we  not  fur- 
nish other  facilities  of  community  life  ?  Can  we  not  make  legis- 
lation, both  in  state  and  nation,  more  in  keeping  with  the  needs 
of  rural  improvement  ? 

Health  and  Sanitation.     We  need  a  large  program  of  educa- 


506  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

tion  for  farm  people,  especially  those  in  less  prosperous  regions, 
in  the  full  meaning  of  personal  hygiene,  the  very  best  care  of 
the  body,  the  very  best  dietaries,  and  in  public  health,  in  order 
to  stamp  out  epidemics,  secure  care  of  sewage,  restrict  the  spread 
of  contagious  diseases.  In  many  ways  these  things  are  much 
more  difficult  to  handle  in  the  country  than  in  the  city. 

Recreation.  This  is  one  of  the  great  lacks  of  country  life. 
"We  need  a  more  adequate  play  life  for  the  young  and  a  thor- 
oughly satisfying  social  life  for  the  adults.  We  must  bring 
into  the  country  some  of  those  legitimate  opportunities  for  plea- 
sure that  people  of  the  city  have.  Better  than  this,  we  would 
encourage  the  country  people  themselves  in  the  making  of  their 
own  recreation. 

Country  Planning.  The  roads,  the  buildings,  the  village  parks, 
all  of  the  material  arrangements  of  the  country,  should  be -care- 
fully planned. 

Social  Welfare.  There  is  need  in  the  country  as  well  as  in 
the  city  for  helpfulness  to  those  not  well  circumstanced;  the 
insane,  the  feeble-minded,  the  poor,  the  sick,  the  unfortunate. 
We  can  organize  better  than  we  have  thus  far  the  spirit  of  help- 
fulness. It  is  not  enough  that  we  have  the  neighborly  interest ; 
we  must  also  have  the  skilled  aid. 

Morals  and  Religion.  How  can  we  maintain  the  highest  and 
finest  ideals  of  personal  character  and  of  community  life  ?  How 
can  we  make  religion  real  in  the  work  of  the  farm  and  in  the 
living  together  of  the  people?  How  can  we  assist  the  country 
church,  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  the  Sunday  School,  to  be  of  the  largest 
possible  service  in  the  country? 

SOME   ECONOMIC    ADJUSTMENTS 

We  have  outlined  the  problem  of  rural  improvement  in  a  most 
sketchy  way  but  we  have  not  yet  quite  told  the  whole  story. 
All  that  has  gone  before  calls  for  a  certain  balancing  of  inter- 
ests. There  are  adjustments  to  be  made  from  time  to  time. 
There  are  diverse  interests  that  have  to  be  reconciled.  We 
never  can  "solve"  the  farm  problems  as  problems  of  arithmetic 
can  be  solved.  In  our  search  for  constant  improvement,  we  find 
the  constant  need  of  establishing  new  relationships  by  the  people, 
of  developing  new  methods  of  doing  business.  What  is  right 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS        507 

and  fair  at  one  time  may  not  be  right  and  fair  at  another  time 
because  of  changing  conditions.  So  let  us  consider  for  a  moment 
some  of  these  adjustments  that  the  farmers  must  recognize. 

ADJUSTMENTS     AMONG    THE    FARMERS    THEMSELVES 

We  must  secure  a  sort  of  balance  between  the  interests  of 
the  individual  and  the  interests  of  the  farmers  as  a  whole.  This, 
of  course,  is  a  need  everywhere  in  the  world.  It  is  not  by  any 
means  true  that  if  each  individual  is  left  to  follow  his  own 
interests  the  interests  of  all  will  be  gained.  This  is  simply  the 
"law  of  the  jungle";  the  strong  win,  the  interests  of  the  weak 
are  over-ridden.  Perhaps  the  greatest  obstacle  to  agricultural 
business  cooperation  in  America  is  the  fact  that  the  most  pros- 
perous and  efficient  farmers  in  the  community 'do  not  see  the 
need  of  pooling  their  interests;  they  are  not  willing  to  sacrifice 
a  little  for  the  sake  of  those  who  would  be  greatly  helped  by 
common  action. 

Balance  'between  Sub-Industries.  When  a  new  opportunity 
in  agriculture  shows  itself,  it  may  become  so  popular  as  to  crowd 
out  other  forms  of  production  which  are  fully  as  essential. 
Fruit  growing  in  the  irrigated  districts  of  the  "West  not  only 
encroached  upon  fruit  growing  in  the  East,  but  hindered  the 
development  of  dairy  and  stock  farming  to  which- the  irrigated 
areas  are  peculiarly  adapted. 

Balance  between  Sectional  Interests.  One  of  the  most  serious 
of  all  rural  questions  is  the  competition  of  regions.  The  apple 
growers  of  New  England  with  those  of  the  Pacific  Northwest; 
the  vegetable  growers  of  Florida  with  those  of  Massachusetts; 
the  sugar  beet  growers  and  the  sugar  cane  growers ;  the  farmers 
who  grow  cattle  feed  in  the  Middle  West  and  the  dairymen 
of  the  East  who  have  to  buy  these  feeds.  We  find  here  constant 
need  of  establishing  fair  relationships. 

Regional  Self-Support.  It  is  a  law  of  economics  that  the 
greatest  efficiency  in  production  comes  when  each  region  pro- 
duces that  which  it  can  best  grow,  not  necessarily  that  which  it 
can  grow  better  than  some  other  region.  Each  acre  of  land 
should  be  put  to  the  best  use  for  which  it  is  fitted,  considering 
soil,  climate,  labor,  and  market.  Therefore  it  is  neither  prac- 
ticable nor  desirable  that  each  country,  or  each  state,  or  each 


508  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

county,  or  each  community,  should  grow  all  that  it  consumes. 
But  we  have  gone  so  far  in  producing  for  the  distant  market 
that  we  have  not  only  neglected  the  nearby  market  which  is 
often  poorly  supplied,  but  we  have  incurred  an  enormous  expense 
for  transporting  and  handling  products  which  go  back  and  forth. 
We  need  to  establish  certain  zones  or  regions  that  up  to  a  certain 
point  can  take  care  of  themselves  with  reference  to  the  growing 
of  their  food. 

The  Rural  Village.  There  are  perhaps  ten  million  people  in 
America  living  in  villages  that  are  set  in  a  rural  environment. 
The  people  are  not  farmers  but  they  live  in  the  midst  of  farmers. 
They  are  not  city  people.  Their  very  existence  depends  upon 
the  success  of  the  farming  regions  round  about,  and  yet  there 
is  often  the  sharpest  antagonism  between  people  of  the  village 
and  the  people  of  the  country.  The  farmers  believe  that  the 
village  merchants  exploit  them  at  every  opportunity.  There  is 
an  odd  notion  among  the  merchants  that  in  some  way  the  farmers 
owe  them  a  living.  This  antagonism  shows  itself  in  lack  of 
social  intercourse,  in  sharp  political  fights.  How  can  wre  re- 
store the  balance  between  the  village,  which  includes  the  small 
"city"  set  in  an  agricultural  region,  and  the  farmers  round 
about?  Surely  there  is  a  way  toward  cooperation,  a  real  com- 
munity interest.  Each  can  help  the  other. 

Permanent  Agriculture  without  Caste.  We  have  a  shifting 
agricultural  population.  There  is  scarcely  any  part  of  America 
which  has  not  suffered  from  over-frequent  migration  to  the  city 
or  to  other  parts  of  the  country.  Ownership  changes  frequently. 
This  impermanence  is  not  true  everywhere,  but  it  is  character- 
istic of  American  agriculture.  It  cannot  result  in  the  best 
farming.  It  has  not  contributed  to  the  best  community  life. 
Leadership  is  lost;  yet  we  would  not  want  everybody  born  in 
the  country  to  stay  in  the  country.  The  idea  of  keeping  all 
the  farm  boys  on  the  farm  is  the  poorest  policy  we  could  follow. 
We  cannot  afford  to  arrange  our  rural  education  so  that  the 
boy  is  obliged  to  stay  on  the  farm  or  go  to  the  city  handicapped 
in  his  preparation  for  life.  The  door  from  country  to  city  must 
swing  wide.  There  must  be  freedom  of  intercourse  between  city 
and  country.  We  must  not  have  a  peasantry — a  rustic  group. 
In  no  parts  of  our  country  must  there  be  a  possibility  of  farmers 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         509 

being  looked  down  upon  or  being  sharply  distinguished  from 
other  classes  in  any  way  that  marks  them  off  as  a  caste.  How 
then  may  we  adjust  our  modes  of  living,  our  education,  our 
country  life,  our  village  life,  so  that  we  shall  secure  the  advan- 
tages of  permanent  occupation  of  the  land  without  the  disad- 
vantages of  a  caste  system? 

Some  Special  Problems.  There  is  no  doubt  but  the  racial 
problems  which  have  disturbed  our  country  show  themselves 
in  agriculture.  Special  groups,  such  as  the  negro  farmer,  the 
mountaineer,  able  but  isolated,  the  emigrant  farmer,  sturdy  but 
foreign,  must  in  some  fashion  be  taken  into  the  common  lot. 
Only  so  can  we  have  a  real  democracy.  How  are  we  to  do  it? 
There  is  a  question  of  grades  or  strata  of  farmers.  In  almost 
any  farm  community  we  find  a  group  of  very  prosperous  and 
successful  farmers,  men  who  we  say  can  ''take  care  of  them- 
selves. ' '  Near  the  other  end  of  the  scale  we  find  the  ' '  submerged 
tenth,"  men  not  very  efficient.  At  the  extreme  end  we  find 
the  hundredth  man — the  abandoned  farmer.  Between  these  ex- 
tremes, the  great  group  of  average  farmers.  So  we  have  farmers 
small  and  farmers  large;  farmers  wise  and  farmers  foolish; 
farmers  educated  and  farmers  illiterate;  and  we  find  the  need 
of  adjusting  our  ideas  and  our  methods  of  living  together  so 
that  as  far  as  possible  these  walls  of  separation  may  be  broken 
down.  The  problem  becomes  a  very  interesting  and  acute  one 
in  any  farm  community  when  we  note  the  prejudices  in  church 
or  in  secret  societies,  and  how  certain  groups  are  inevitably  ex- 
cluded. "We  also  find  farmers  with  special  difficulties;  the  man 
with  the  tiny  farm,  the  landless  farmer,  the  laborless  farmer, 
the  farmer  without  capital,  the  farmer  in  the  depleted  rural  com- 
munity who  would  like  to  see  a  better  day  but  is  not  hopeful 
that  it  can  be  brought  about,  and  finally  the  farm  laborer. 
Sometimes  these  matters  do  not  seem  like  "problems";  but  are 
rather  taken  for  granted.  They  are  important  questions,  never- 
theless. 

ADJUSTMENTS    BETWEEN    THE   FARMER    AND    OTHER    INTERESTS 

The  Balance  between  Producers  and  Consumers.  We  have 
had  a  great  outcry  because  in  some  prosperous-  agricultural  re- 
gions, as  well  as  in  those  less  prosperous,  the  farm  population  has 


510  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

actually  declined.  At  the  bottom  this  change  of  population  was 
simply  an  effort  to  adjust  the  number  of  producers  to  the  num- 
ber of  consumers.  Our  land  policy  had  developed  too  many 
producers.  The  application  of  scientific  principles  to  produc- 
tion and  the  establishment  of  a  nation-wide  system  of  trans- 
portation enabled  relatively  fewer  men  to  grow  the  food  of  the 
nation.  But  of  course  this  may  be  carried  too  far.  If  we  have 
too  many  producers,  we  get  cheap  food  and  also  cheap  men  on 
the  farm.  If  we  have  too  few  producers,  the  country  is  not 
adequately  supplied  with  food. 

Adjustment  in  the  Factors  of  Production.  The  problem  is 
essentially  this:  How  may  the  farmer  compete  with  manufac- 
turing and  business  interests  for  land,  labor  and  capital?  It 
is  a  question  of  proper  relationships.  The  farmer  must  have 
his  share  of  these  or  he  cannot  do  his  best  work.  He  has  to  com- 
pete constantly  with  these  other  industries.  How  can  we  make 
sure  that  he  has  a  fair  field? 

Yield  per  Acre  and  Yield  per  Man.  The  strength  of  Euro- 
pean agriculture  lies  in  its  large  yield  per  acre  of  land.  The 
strength  of  American  agriculture  lies  in  its  large  yield  per  man 
who  works  the  soil.  It  is  in  the  interests  of  consumers  to  have 
the  maximum  yield  of  food  per  acre  f  it  is  in  the  interests  of 
producers  to  have  the  maximum  return  due  each  individual 
worker.  But  clearly,  both  of  these  things  cannot  happen  at 
the  same  time.  Somewhere  we  must  find  the  fair  balance.  We 
must  adjust  the  interests  of  both.  How  can  we  do  it  ? 

The  Conservation  of  Soil  Resources.  Less  than  formerly  do 
the  farmers  want  to  use  their  land  even  if  they  use  it  all  up. 
It  is  a  truism  that  the  American  farmer  has  skimmed  the  cream 
off  the  soil  and  then  gone  on  AVest.  Society,  that  is  all  of  us 
together,  which  really  owns  the  land,  is  interested  to  have 
it  become  more  productive,  whereas  it  has  become  less  produc- 
tive in  many  regions.  Of  course  the  good  farmer  has  the  same 
interest  in  keeping  up  production,  but  many  farmers  do  not 
see  it.  They  want  immediate  results.  Clearly  we  need  an 
adjustment  that  results  both  in  that  use  of  the  land  which 
gives  a  fair  return  to  the  farmer,  and  that  use  which  pre- 
serves its  fertility  undiminished  for  future  generations. 

Sharing  the  Savings.     Both  farmers   and   consumers  would 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF'RURAL  INTERESTS        511 

like  to  abolish  the  middleman's  profits.  The  farmer  rather  ex- 
pects to  get  most  of  the  profits  which  the  middleman  has  made, 
and  the  consumer,  oddly  enough,  has  the  same  ambition.  Both 
cannot  succeed.  This  tendency  shows  itself  in  a  public  market 
where  householders  buy  of  farmers.  Each  wants  to  get  the 
best  bargain  possible.  What  eventually  happens  is  probably 
a  pretty  fair  trade,  both  getting  some  advantage  in  this  matter. 
This  principle  holds  in  the  whole  field  of  soil  distribution.  If 
economies  of  distribution  are  effected,  who  is  to  get  the  benefit 
— consumer  or  producer?  Both!  It  is  a  matter  of  adjust- 
ment. The  answer  lies  in  establishing  fair  trade. 

Agriculture  and  Other  Business.  Agriculture  is  our  great- 
est business  and  yet  it  is  often  left  out  of  account  in  plans 
for  possible  development.  But  its  relation  to  manufactur- 
ing, to  transportation,  to  commerce  and  even  to  finance  is  very 
close  and  even  vital.  Imagine  if"  you  can  the  farm  lands  of 
America  lying  unproductive  for  a  single  year.  Moreover,  it 
is  clear  that  if  these  relationships  of  agriculture  to  other  in- 
dustries are  so  close,  competing  interests  will  show  themselves. 
Inasmuch  as  these  industries  are  well  organized  and  agriculture 
is  poorly  organized,  the  farmers  are  apt  to  be  the  losers.  How 
can  we  adjust  these  big  interests  of  these  big  industries  so  that 
all  shall  have  the  square  deal  ? 

Agrarian  Legislation.  The  farmer  has  an  interest  in  taxa- 
tion, in  the  tariff,  in  currency  legislation.  It  is  believed  that 
legislators  have  a  tendency  to  ignore  this  interest,  but  it  can- 
not safely  be  ignored.  If  it  results  in  too  great  injustice,  then 
we  have  a  radical  movement  which  smashes  its  way  through, 
perhaps  to  undesirable  ends  for  all  concerned.  What  we  need, 
then,  is  an  attempt  to  adjust,  in  all  legislative  matters,  the  fair 
interests  of  farmers  to  the  fair  interests  of  other  people. 

The  Farmer  in  Politics.  How  can  the  farmers  make  them- 
selves felt  in  our  political  life?  As  a  party,  shall  they  have  rep- 
resentation in  legislative  business,  somewhat  equivalent  to  their 
numerical  strength?  Neither  of  these  things  seems  very  prac- 
ticable, perhaps  not  even  desirable.  On  the  other  hand,  are  the 
farmers  to  be  left  out  of  account  and  have  nothing  to  say? 
Are  they  to  have  no  unified  opinion  or  desire  that  finds  ex- 
pression through  the  political  party  or  the  government?  How 


512  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

can  we  find  the  balance  between  political  neglect  of  the  farmers 
and  political  revolution  among  the  farmers? 

The  Farmers  and  Organized  Labor.  Have  these  groups  in- 
terests in  common  or  are  they  absolutely  antagonistic?  If  in 
common,  where  do  these  interests  lie  ?  If  antagonistic,  how  may 
antagonism  be  allayed  ? 

Rural  and  Urban  Aspects  of  Civilization.  There  are  people 
who  think  that  the  city  stands  for  civilization,  that  leadership, 
wealth,  organization,  power,  will  reside  in  the  city  and  take 
the  helm  of  society's  progress.  But  have  the  farmers  nothing 
to  contribute?  Are  not  the  methods  of  living  and  of  thinking 
worth  something  to  the  common  country?  One  of  the  most  im- 
portant adjustments  is  to  make  it  possible  for  organized  farmers 
in  every  country  in  the  world  to  make  their  fullest  contribution 
in  work,  in  thought,  in  ideals,  to  the  common  welfare  of  man- 
kind. 


B.    INTEBNATIONAL  OBGANIZATION 

THE  INTERNATIONAL  INSTITUTE  OF  AGRICULTURE  l 

THE  origin  of  the  Institute  is  shown  in  the  following  letter 
of  H.  M.  the  King  of  Italy  to  the  Prime  Minister  H.  E.  Giov. 
Giolitti. 

Dear  President : 

Mr.  David  Lubin,  a  citizen  of  the  United  States,  has  made 
a  proposal  to  me,  with  all  the  ardor  of  sincere  conviction,  and 
it  seems  to  me  both  wise  and  useful,  and  I  therefore  recommend 
it  to  the  consideration  of  my  Government. 

Farmers,  who  generally  form  the  most  numerous  class  in  a 
country  and  have  everywhere  a  great  influence  on  the  destinies 
of  nations,  can  not,  if  they  remain  isolated,  make  sufficient 
provision  for  the  improvement  of  the  various  crops  and  their 
distribution  in  proportion  to  the  needs  of  consumers,  nor  pro- 
tect their  own  interests  on  the  market,  which,  as  far  as  the 

i  Adapted  from  Report  of  the  International  Institute  of  Agriculture,  1915. 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         513 

more  important  produce  of  the  soil  is  concerned,  is  tending 
to  become  more  and  more  one  market  for  the  whole  world. 

Therefore,  considerable  advantage  might  be  derived  from  an 
International  Institute,  which,  with  no  political  object,  would 
undertake  to  study  the  conditions  of  agriculture  in  the  various 
countries  of  the  world,  periodically  publishing  reports  on  the 
amount  and  character  of  the  crops,  so  as  to  facilitate  produc- 
tion, render  commerce  less  expensive  and  more  rapid,  and  estab- 
lish more  suitable  prices. 

This  Institute,  coming  to  an  understanding  with  the  various 
national  offices  already  existing  for  the  purpose,  would  also  sup- 
ply precise  information  on  the  conditions  of  agricultural  labor 
in  various  localities,  so  as  to  serve  as  a  safe  and  useful  guide 
for  emigrants;  promote  agreements  for  mutual  defense  against 
diseases  of  plants  and  animals,  where  individual  action  is  in- 
sufficient ;  and,  finall3T,  would  exercise  an  action  favorable  to  the 
development  of  rural  cooperation,  agricultural  insurance  and 
credit. 

The  benefits  attained  by  means  of  such  an  Institute,  a  bond 
of  union  between  all  farmers  and  consequently  an  important 
influence  for  peace  would  certainly  be  manifold.  Rome  would 
be  a  suitable  place  for  its  inauguration,  at  which  the  representa- 
tives of  the  adhering  States  and  the  larger  Associations  con- 
cerned might  assemble,  and  harmonize  the  authority  of  Govern- 
ments with  the  free  energies  of  the  farmers. 

I  am  convinced  that  the  nobility  of  the  aim  will  suffice  to  over- 
come the  difficulties  of  the  enterprise. 

And  in  this  faith  I  sign  myself, 

Your  affectionate  cousin, 

VICTOR  EMMANNUEL. 
Rome,  January  24th,  1905. 

In  consequence  of  this  letter  the  International  Institute  of 
Agriculture  was  founded  by  act  of  the  International  Treaty  of 
June  7th,  1905.  The  treaty  was  ratified  by  forty  governments, 
and  twelve  others  have  since  adhered  to  it,  so  that,  at  the 
present  time,  almost  the  whole  civilized  world  is  included. 

The  seat  of  the  Institute  is  at  Rome.  According  to  the  treaty 
it  is  a  "  government  institution  in  which  each  adhering  power  is 


514  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

represented  by  delegates  of  its  choice."  It  is  administered  by  a 
General  Assembly  and  by  a  Permanent  Committee.  The  staff 
now  numbers  ninety-seven. 

The  revenue  of  the  Institute  is  derived  from  contributions 
paid  by  each  of  the  adhering  nations  according  to  the  group  in 
which  the  nation  is  inscribed,  as  established  by  the  treaty.  (The 
revenue  amounts  to  approximately  $250,000  annually. — Editor.) 

The  Institute  performs  the  following  work : 

1.  By  means  of  its  Bureau  of  General  Statistics,  it  collects, 
coordinates  and  publishes  as  promptly   as  possible,   statistical 
data  on  crops  and  livestock,  the  trade  in  agricultural  products, 
and  their  prices  on  different  markets.     This  crop  reporting  in- 
formation is  set  forth  in  fuller  detail  in  the  monthly  Bulletin 
of  Agricultural  Statistics  which  is  published  simultaneously  in 
five  languages.     The  Institute  also  publishes  an  "  International 
Year  Book  of  Agricultural  Statistics,"  which  contains  summary 
tables  of  crop  areas  and  yields. 

2.  The  Bureau  of  Agricultural  Intelligence  and  Plant  Dis- 
eases collects,  elaborates,  publishes  information  of  a  technical 
nature   on  agriculture,   agricultural   industries,   stock-breeding, 
etc.     It   publishes   a  bulletin   each  month   on   agricultural   in- 
telligence and  diseases  of  plants. 

3.  The  Bureau  of  Economic  and  Social  Intelligence  collects, 
elaborates  and  publishes  information  concerning  agricultural  co- 
operation, insurance  and  credit  as  well  as  other  questions  of 
agricultural  economy. 

4.  The  library  collects  the  books  and  documents  required  for 
the  work.     It   publishes   a  weekly  Bibliographical   Bulletin   in 
which  are  indicated  the  books  received  as  well  as  the  most  im- 
portant articles  noted  by  the  technical  bureaus  when  examining 
periodicals. 

5.  The  General  Secretary's  Office  publishes  an  "International 
Year  Book  of  Agricultural  Legislation"  containing  the  laws  re- 
lating to  agriculture  enacted  in  the  countries  adhering  to  the 
institute. 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         515 


C.    NATIONAL  ORGANIZATION 

WORK  OF  THE  OFFICE  OF  MARKETS  AND  RURAL 
ORGANIZATION 1 


CHARLES   J.   BRAND 

IT  is  believed  that  effective  and  economical  methods  for  dis- 
tributing and  marketing  farm  products  should  go  hand  in  hand 
with  scientific  methods  of  production,  as  it  profits  little  to  im- 
prove the  quality  and  increase  the  quantity  of  our  crops  if  we 
can  not  learn  when,  where,  and  how  they  may  be  sold  to  ad- 
vantage. To  provide  for  a  study  of  the  problems  involved, 
Congress  during  the  spring  of  1913  appropriated  funds  for  the 
establishment  and  operation  of  the  Office  of  Markets  .of  the 
Department  of  Agriculture.  The  Office  of  Rural  Organization 
was  established  by  Congress  a  year  later,  in  order  to  determine 
the  possibilities  and  encourage  the  use  of  organized  cooperative 
effort  in  removing  rural  conditions.  These  two  Offices  were  com- 
bined on  July  1,  1914,  and  the  combined  unit  is  known  as  the 
Office  of  Markets  and  Rural  Organization. 

The  authority  conferred  by  Congress  in  appropriating  funds 
for  the  maintenance  of  this  Office  provides  "for  acquiring  and 
diffusing  among  the  people  of  the  United  States  useful  infor- 
mation on  subjects  connected  with  the  marketing  and  distribut- 
ing of  farm  and  nonmanufactured  food  products  and  the  pur- 
chasing of  farm  supplies,"  and  the  study  of  cooperation  among 
farmers  in  the  United  States.  So  far  as  marketing  work  is  con- 
cerned, the  activities  of  the  Office,  therefore,  are  limited  to  the 
collection  and  distribution  of  information.  For  example,  it  has 
no  authority  to  prosecute  cases  of  alleged  dishonesty  on  the  part 
of  producers,  carriers,  dealers,  or  buyers.  It  has  nothing  what- 
ever to  do  with  the  problems  of  production. 

Owing  to  the  complexity  and  wide  scope  of  the  work,  up  to  the 
present  time  it  has  been  impossible  to  undertake  a  comprehen- 
sive study  of  more  than  a  few  of  the  most  urgent  and  important 

i  Adapted  from  Doe.  Markets  1,  1915,  p.  1.  U.  S.  Department  of  Agri- 
culture, Office  of  Markets  and  Rural  Organization. 


516  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  the  problems  which  demand  investigation.  As  far  as  pos- 
sible the  marketing  problems  are  being  studied  from  the  points 
of  view  of  producer,  dealer,  and  consumer.  A  large  part  of 
the  rural  organization  investigations  has  consisted  of  studies 
of  the  work  of  rural  credit  associations.  As  this  work  is  now 
well  under  way,  more  time  will  be  devoted  to  other  phases 
of  rural  organization  work  without,  however,  discontinuing  any 
of  the  rural  credit  investigations. 

Besides  the  phase  of  cooperation  dealing  with  the  marketing 
of  farm  and  food  products,  work  has  been  instituted  looking 
toward  that  basic  improvement  of  country  life  which  must  come 
from  the  country  itself,  through  the  development  of  resident 
leadership.  This  work  recognizes  that  the  true  function  of  in- 
creased prosperity  in  the  farm  home  is  the  raising  of  the 
standard  of  living  and  thinking  upon  the  farm.  While  other 
projects  of  the  Office  are  designed  to  promote  changes  which 
will  make  farming  more  profitable,  the  particular  object  of  this 
work  is  to  make  the  country  a  more  desirable  place  in  which 
to  live. 

The  Office  is  investigating  cooperative  organizations  that  are 
endeavoring  to  improve  conditions  of  education,  health,  recrea- 
tion, and  household  economy  in  rural  life.  The  work  done  thus 
far  reveals  many  needs  in  all  of  these  directions,  and,  when 
practicable,  the  Office  attempts  to  supply  information  and  sug- 
gestions to  such  associations. 

Local  demonstration  work  has  been  undertaken  in  Alabama 
and  in  North  Carolina  in  cooperation  with  State  and  local 
agencies. 


THE  PLACE   OF   GOVERNMENT   IN  AGRICULTURAL 
COOPERATION  AND  RURAL  ORGANIZATION  1 

GOVERNMENT,  whether  local,  State,  or  national,  can  render  a 
great  service  to  agriculture  and  country  life.  Government  can 
do  a  great  deal  more  than  many  people  suppose,  and  it  ought 
to  do  a  great  deal  less  than  many  people  expect.  The  follow- 

i  Adapted  from  Report  of  the  American  Commission,  Senate  Document 
Xo.  261,  Part  I,  pp.  20-27. 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         517 

ing  principles  are  set  forth  as  suggestive  of  fundamental  con- 
ditions of  Government  service : 

1.  The  Government,  as  representing  all  the  people,  should  do 
all  such  a  Government  can  do  on  behalf  of  better  farm  practice, 
better  farm  business,  and  better  farm  life — in  so  far  as  this 
betterment  is  to  the  advantage  of  all  the  people. 

2.  In  general,  however,  Government  should  do  nothing  that 
can  effectively  be  done  by  individual  farmers,  or  by  the  farmers 
collectively  through  voluntary  effort.     It  is  highly  important  to 
develop  self-help.     The  "cooperative  spirit"  is  vital  to  the  suc- 
cess of  coooperative  effort,  and  this  spirit  is  best  engendered  by 
the  work  of  voluntary  agencies  of  social  service. 

3.  The  Government,  however,  may  take  the  lead  temporarily 
in  many  movements,  in  order  to  stimulate  interest  and  to  show 
how  progress  may  best  be  secured. 

4.  Where  there  is  practically  unanimous  agreement  on  the 
part  of  the  people  that  a  certain  type  of  effort  is  essential  for 
the  good  of  the  whole  people,  it  is  highly  proper  that  the  Gov- 
ernment should  be  the  agency  to  perform  the  service. 

The  types  of  work  which  Government  may  do  for  agricultural 
cooperation,  for  example,  under  the  principles  just  enunciated, 
are  as  follows: 

1.  The    Government    may    investigate    facts    and    principles 
underlying  the  development  of  agriculture  and  country  life. 

2.  The  Government  may  interpret  those  principles  in  the  light 
of  the  needs  of  the  people. 

3.  The  Government  may  inform  the  people  of  the  results  of 
its  investigations  and  interpretations. 

4.  The  Government  may  advise  individuals  and  groups  how 
best  to  take  advantage  of  these  facts  and  principles;  that  is, 
how  to  apply  them  to  farm  improvement,  marketing  and  ex- 
change, and  community  life. 

5.  The  Government  may  demonstrate  the  best  methods  of  ac- 
complishing this  application  of  facts  and  principles  to  actual 
needs  and  conditions. 

The  Government  may  not  participate  in  the  farmers'  busi- 
ness nor  direct  their  community  life.  Only  as  legislation  may 
be  necessary  to  restrain  should  Government  interfere  with  the 
initiative  and  development  of  the  individual.  It  should  not  try 


518  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

to  run  a  man's  farm  for  him,  nor  to  manage  the  farmers'  busi- 
ness transactions. 

There  are  money  limitations  to  the  work  of  Government. 
The  rural  problem  is  so  large  that  the  work  of  Government  even 
within  its  field  will  have  to  be  supplemented  by  voluntary  aid 
and  financial  support. 

There  are  some  fields  in  which  the  people  are  not  sufficiently 
agreed  as  to  methods  and  machinery  so  that  Government  can 
safely  undertake  to  carry  on  the  collective  enterprises  of  the 
people. 

ORGANIZATION  OF  A  COUNTY  FOR  EXTENSION 
WORK— THE  FARM-BUREAU  PLAN1 

L.   R.    SIMONS 
PURPOSES  OF   THE   FARM   BUREAU 

•A  COUNTY  farm  bureau  is  an  association  of  people  interested 
in  rural  affairs,  which  has  for  its  object  the  development  in  a 
county  of  the  most  profitable  and  permanent  system  of  agri- 
culture, the  establishment  of  community  ideals,  and  the  further- 
ance of  the  well-being,  prosperity,  and  happiness  of  the  rural 
people,  through  cooperation  with  local,  State,  and  National 
agencies  in  the  development  and  execution  of  a  program  of  ex- 
tension work  in  agriculture  and  home  economics. 

At  the  outset  acknowledgment  should  be  made  of  the  excellent 
work  already  accomplished  by  many  farmers'  organizations. 
Thousands  of  cooperative  agricultural  associations,  farmers '  clubs, 
granges,  equities,  gleaners,  and  other  secret  and  nonsecret  organ- 
izations are  working  together  successfully  for  the  betterment  of 
rural  conditions.  The  county  farm  bureau  aims  to  coordinate 
and  correlate  the  work  of  all  these  organizations,  thereby  unifying 
and  strengthening  the  work  they  are  doing.  It  does  not  sup- 
plant or  compete  with  any  existing  organization,  but  establishes 
a  bureau  through  which  all  may  increase  their  usefulness  through 
more  direct  contact  with  each  other  and  with  State  and  Na- 
tional institutions  without  in  any  way  surrendering  their  in- 

i  Adapted  from  U.  S.  Dept.  of  Agriculture,  Department  Circular  30, 
Washington,  May,  1919,  pp.  4-21. 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS        519 

dividuality.  It  is  a  nonpolitical,  nonsectarian,  nonsecret  organi- 
zation representing  the  whole  farming  population,  men,  women, 
and  children,  and  as  such  it  acts  as  a  clearing  house  for  every 
association  interested  in  work  with  rural  people. 

While  the  original  conception  of  the  farm  bureau  was  to 
develop  county-agent  work,  it  soon  filled  a  broader  field  and  it 
is  now  rapidly  coming  to  be  recognized  as  the  official  rural  or- 
ganization for  the  promotion  of  all  that  pertains  t6  a  better 
and  more  prosperous  rural  life.  It  cooperates  directly  with  the 
State  and  the  Federal  Government  in  the  employment  of  county 
agents,  home-demonstration  agents,  boys'  and  girls'  club  leaders, 
and  other  local  extension  workers.  The  services  of  the  farm 
bureau  are  available  to  all  extension  agencies  desiring  to  work 
within  the  county.  It  is  quite  as  much  interested  in  home- 
economics  demonstrations,  boys'  and  girls'  club  work,  farm- 
management  demonstrations,  and  the  work  of  the  various  insti- 
tutional specialists  as  it  is  in  the  demonstrations  carried  on 
directly  by  the  county  agent.  Thus  while  an  outgrowth  of 
county-agent  work  it  has  become  broader  than  county-agent 
work,  and  is  now  the  federating  agency  through  which  all  groups 
of  rural  people,  whether  organized  or  unorganized,  are  able  to 
secure  a  hearing. 

The  primary  purposes  of  the  farm  bureau  are : 

1.  To  encourage  self-help  through  developing  and  exercising 
leadership  in  the  rural  affairs  of  each  community. 

2.  To  reveal  to  all  the  people  of  the  county  the  agricultural 
possibilities  of  the  county  and  how  they  may  be  realized. 

3.  To  furnish  the  means  whereby  the  agricultural  problems  of 
the  county  and  the  problems  of  the  farm-home  may  be  system- 
atically studied  and  their  solution  attempted  through  a  county 
program  of  work  to  secure  the  well-being,  prosperity,  and  happi- 
ness of  all  rural  people. 

4.  To   coordinate   the   efforts   of  existing   rural   agricultural 
forces,  organized  or  unorganized,  and  to  promote  new  lines  of 
effort. 

5.  To  bring  to  the  agents  representing  the  organization,  the 
State  agricultural  college,  and  the  Federal  Department  of  Agri- 
culture the  counsel  and  advice  of  the  best  people  in  the  county 
as  to  what  ought  to  be  done  and  how  to  do  it. 


520  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

6.  To  furnish  the  necessary  local  machinery  for  easily  and 
quickly  supplying  every  community  in  the  county  with  informa- 
tion of  value  to  that  community  or  to  the  county  as  a  whole. 

MEMBERSHIP 

Membership  in  the  farm  bureau  is  open  to  all  residents 
of  the  county  and  nonresident  landowners  who  are  directly  in- 
terested in  agriculture,  men  and  women  alike.  The  membership 
should  be  well  distributed  over  the  county  and  should  be  large 
enough  to  be  thoroughly  representative  of  the  farmers  of  the 
county.  At  least  ten  per  cent,  of  the  farmers  should  be  members 
before  permanent  organization  is  effected.  At  least  eighty  per 
cent,  of  the  membership  should  consist  of  bona  fide  farmers  or 
rural  residents. 

The  membership  fee  is  necessary  not  only  to  provide  funds  to 
finance  the  work  of  the  organization  but  also  to  secure  the 
active  interest  of  each  member.  Membership  fees  are  needed  to 
buy  stationery,  postage,  office  equipment  and  supplies,  to  publish 
exchange  bulletins  or  other  bureau  publications,  to  pay  the 
traveling  expenses  of  the  officers  and  committeemen  to  attend 
county,  State,  or  National  conferences,  etc.  If  a  clear-cut  pres- 
entation of  the  facts  regarding  the  nature  of  the  organization, 
the  duties  and  privileges  of  the  members,  and  the  work  already 
accomplished  and  to  be  undertaken  is  made,  no  difficulty  should 
be  experienced  in  keeping  up  the  membership  from  year  to  year. 
In  some  States  yearly  educational  campaigns  to  acquaint  the 
people  of  the  counties  with  the  nature  of  the  bureaus  and  the 
work  accomplished  have  produced  a  steady  increase  in  the 
number  of  counties  organized  and  in  the  number  of  members. 

Every  member  should  give  not  only  moral  support  to  the 
work  but  also  personal  attention  to  some  activity  of  the  bureau. 
Each  member  should  keep  in  close  touch  with  the  work  in 
progress,  assist  in  planning  for  the  coming  year,  and  participate 
in  the  election  of  the  officers  and  executive  committeemen. 

FARM-BUREAU    PROGRAM    OF    WORK 

A  farm-bureau  program  of  work  is  a  plan  for  the  promotion 
of  certain  definite  lines  of  work  that  pertain  to  a  better  and 
more  prosperous  agriculture  and  a  more  satisfactory  rural  and 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         521 

home  life.  A  farm-bureau  project  is  a  plan  for  developing 
some  part  of  the  program.  For  example,  a  dairy  project  might 
include  plans  for  introducing  pure-bred  dairy  cattle,  increasing 
the  number  of  silos,  demonstrating  better  and  more  economical 
feeding,  and  improving  the  quality  of  butter  made  in  the  homes. 
Men,  women,  and  boys  and  girls  may  cooperate  in  carrying  out 
such  a  project.  It  is  essential  that  each  member,  and  more 
especially  each  committeeman,  should  play  an  important  part 
in  formulating  the  program  and  in  promoting  the  projects  or 
activities.  The  mechanics  of  planning  and  promoting  the 
program  and  writing  a  project  are  outlined  below. 

Development  of  the  County  Program.  1.  In  organizing  a 
farm  bureau  at  least  one  member  of  the  temporary  organiza- 
tion committee,  whose  duty  it  is  to  direct  the  organization  cam- 
paign for  the  farm  bureau,  should  be  selected  to  look  after  the 
details  of  formulating  a  tentative  county  program  of  work. 
If  a  program  including  both  agriculture  and  home  economics 
is  contemplated,  a  program  of  work  committee  of  at  least  two 
members  is  desirable  in  order  that  problems  more  particularly 
relating  to  each  phase  of  the  program  may  be  carefully  analyzed. 

2.  The  program-of-work  committee  should  send  out  a  question- 
naire to  each  member  of  the  farm  bureau  requesting  suggestions 
as  to  the  most  important  problems  and  how  to  solve  them. 

3.  The  program-of-work  committee  should  tabulate  the   an- 
swers to  the  questionnaires  and  secure  additional  information 
from  the  organizer  and  the  temporary  committees,  and  by  per- 
sonal observation. 

4.  The  chairman  of  the  program-of-work  committee  or  the 
organizer  should  lead  the  discussion  at  the  county  organization 
meeting  and  make  a  list  of  the  problems  on  a  blackboard.     Such 
general  headings  as  Farm,  Home,  and  Community  have  some- 
times been  used. 

5.  A  tentative  program  of  work  should  be  planned  at  this 
meeting  and  project  leaders  selected  to  serve  as  members  of  the 
executive  committee.     The  committee  on  nominations  might  well 
meet  with  the  program-of-work  committee  in  selecting  project 
leaders. 

G.  From  the  suggestions  made  at  the  annual  meeting  the  execu- 
tive committee  should  work  out  a  definite  yearly  program  of 


522  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY     • 

work  and  refer  projects  to  the  project  leaders  to  consider  and 
develop  the  details.  County,  home  demonstration,  and  club 
agents  should  be  selected  with  reference  to  their  ability  to  assist 
in  carrying  out  projects. 

7.  The  projects  leaders  should  work  with  the  county  and  home 
demonstration  agents  and  club  leaders  in  outlining  the  details  of 
the  projects.  They  should  consider  not  only  what  should  be 
undertaken,  but  who  will  do  the  work,  how  it  will  be  done,  when 
it  will  be  done,  and  where  (in  which  communities),  it  will  be 
done.  In  considering  what  should  be  undertaken  they  should 
study  the  problems  relating  to  the  project  more  carefully  than 
they  have  previously  been  studied,  make  a  list  of  these  problems, 
and  prepare  a  chart  showing  the  relation  of  each  project  to  the 
entire  farm-bureau  program  of  work.  This  will  tend  to  prevent 
duplication  of  effort.  In  considering  who  will  do  the  work  they 
should  make  a  list  of  the  teaching  forces  of  the  county  and  lo- 
cate them  on  an  outline  map  of  the  county  by  communities. 
They  should  also  list  the  amount  of  work  the  extension  special- 
ists from  the  State  agricultural  college  can  render.  In  consid- 
ering how  the  work  will  be  done  they  should  outline  methods  for 
starting  the  work,  securing  demonstrators  and  cooperators,  and 
following  up  the  work  until  definite  results  are  obtained.  In 
considering  ivhere  the  work  will  be  done  they  should  indicate  on 
the  map  those  communities  in  which  the  work  needs  to  be  under- 
taken. In  considering  when  the  work  will  be  done  they  should 
prepare  a  project  calendar  placing  the  "months  and  weeks  of 
the  year  across  the  top  of  a  sheet  of  paper  and  the  various  parts 
of  the  project  down  the  left-hand  side  of  the  sheet,  and  drawing 
lines  to  the  right  of  each  part  of  the  project  to  indicate  just 
how  much  time  and  at  what  periods  the  agents  will  need  to 
spend  on  each  part  and  the  entire  project.  In  planning  the 
details  of  a  project  the  recommendations  of  the  college  special- 
ists should  be  carefully  considered.  Not  only  local  problems,  but 
also  State  and  National  problems  should  be  carefully  studied. 

8.  The  outline  of  each  project,  together  with  charts,  maps,  etc., 
will  be  presented  by  the  project  leader  to  the  executive  commit- 
tee for  consideration.  The  committee  and  the  agents  employed 
will  discuss  the  projects  and  find  out  from  the  project  cal- 
endars, charts,  and  maps  whether  too  much  or  too  little  work 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS        523 

is  being  undertaken  during  the  year.  In  other  words,  the  execu- 
tive committee  will  now  consider  the  entire  program  of  work, 
just  how  it  will  be  undertaken,  by  whom,  where,  and  when. 

9.  The  county  agent,  the  home-demonstration  agent,  or  the 
county  club  leader  will  write  the  project.     If  the  project  in- 
volves work  relating  to  two  or  all  three  of  the  agents,  each  should 
write  the  part  directly  relating  to  his  or  her  work,  or  the  pro- 
ject should  be  considered  in  conference  and  one  agent  delegated 
to  write  it. 

10.  Each  project   should  then  be   submitted  to   the  project 
leader  for  signature,  to  the  executive  committee  for  approval 
and  the  signature  of  the  president  and  the  agent  or  agents 
concerned,  and  to  the  extension  director  at  the  State  agricultural 
college  for  his  approval  and  for  the  consideration  of  any  special- 
ist or  leader  concerned. 

Development  of  the  Community  Program.  It  is  very  essential 
that  each  community  have  a  definite  program  of  work  based 
largely  on  the  county  prognam.  The  agents  and  one  or  more 
executive  committeemen  should  visit  each  community  where 
work  is  to  be  undertaken  and  discuss  plans  with  a  group  of 
community  leaders,  tentatively  selected  by  the  temporary  com- 
mittee chairman. 

1.  They  should  make  a  community  map,  locating  on  it  the 
roads,  churches,  schoolhouses,  farmers'  organizations,  and  the 
houses  of  the  farm-bureau  members. 

2.  They  should  make  a  list  of  all  the  farm  families  in  the  com- 
munity, all  the  teaching  forces,  etc. 

3.  They  should  make  a  survey  of  the  community  problems, 
listing  them  under  such  headings  as  Farm,  Home,  and  Com- 
munity. 

4.  They  should  plan  a  community  program  of  work,  based  on 
the  county  program  in  so  far  as  possible,  but  selecting  additional 
projects  as  needed,  since  the  problems  of  the  community  may 
differ  from  those  in  other  communities. 

5.  The  president  of  the  organization  shall  appoint  a  project 
leader  for  each  project  in  the  community  to  serve  as  a  member  of 
the  community  committee.     It  is  inadvisable  to  undertake  a  pro- 
ject in  a  community  unless  a  capable  project  leader  can  be  found 
who  is  willing  to  assume  responsibility  for  the  project. 


524  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

6.  The  community  program  of  work  will  be  presented  to  the 
people  of  the  community  by  the  community  committee  at  the 
winter  community  meeting  of  the  farm  bureau  and  cooperators 
and  demonstrators  will  be  secured. 

Annual  Revision  of  Farm-Bureau  Program.  In  order  to  keep 
the  farm-bureau  members  interested  in  planning  and  carrying 
out  a  program  of  work  it  is  desirable  to  send  out  questionnaires 
to  the  members  each  year,  requesting  suggestions  as  to  desirable 
changes  or  additions  in  the  program  of  work.  It  is  also  desir- 
able to  discuss  the  program  at  meetings  of  the  members  in  each 
community  and  at  the  annual  meeting.  The  executive  and  com- 
munity committees  will  need  to  carefully  revise  the  county  and 
community  programs  each  year,  as  projects  or  parts  of  projects 
are  completed,  or  as  new  problems  arise.  They  will,  of  course, 
use  the  suggestions  of  the  members  as  a  basis  for  any  revision. 
As  indicated,  each  county  project  leader  may,  at  any  time,  call 
meetings  of  the  project  committee,  composed  of  the  various  com- 
munity leaders  to  secure  suggestions  or  to  explain  plans. 
Usually  these  committees  will  be  called  together  before  a  revi- 
sion of  the  yearly  program  of  work  is  undertaken. 

The  following  outline  may  serve  to  suggest  each  step  in  the 
revision  of  the  program: 

(1)  October. — Regular    monthly    meeting    of    executive    committee — make 

plans   for   meetings   of   county   project   committees   and   plans   for 
sending  questionnaire  to  each  farm-bureau  member. 

(2)  October. — Meetings    of    each    community    committee — consider     local 

problems  and  suggestions  of  local  members  and  make  recommenda- 
tions to  project  committees. 

(3;    October. — Meetings    of   project    committees — discuss    recommendations 
of  community  committees  and  suggest  revision  of  projects. 

(4)  November. — Regular    monthly    meeting    of    executive    committee — pre- 

pare tentative  program  of  work  to  present  at  annual  meeting  for 
consideration  and  discussion. 

(5)  November. — Annual  meeting  of  farm  bureau — consider  yearly  program 

of  work. 

(6)  November. — Revision  of  projects  by  project  leaders  and  agents. 

(7)  December. — Regular  monthly  meeting  of   executive   committee — adopt 

program. 

(8)  December. — Revision    of    community    programs    by    community    com- 

mittees. 

The  officers  of  a  farm  bureau  consist  of  a  president,  a  vice 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         525 

president,  a  secretary,  and  a  treasurer,  all  of  whom  should  be 
elected  at  the  annual  meeting  for  a  period  of  one  year.  The 
officers  should  be  chosen  because  of  special  fitness  to  represent 
important  projects  or  activities  of  the  organization,  as  well  as 
because  of  their  fitness  to  perform  the  regular  duties  of  the 
respective  offices.  For  the  most  part  the  officers  should  be  farm 
men  and  women. 


EXECUTIVE    COMMITTEE 

An  executive  committee  of  from  5  to  about  11  members,  in- 
cluding the  officers  of  the  bureau  as  ex-officio  members,  should 
be  elected  by  the  bureau  at  its  annual  meeting  for  a  period  of 
one  year.  Each  member  may  be  called  a  county  project  leader. 
It  is  advisable  to  have  an  efficient  nominating  committee  ap- 
pointed at  the  annual  meeting,  in  order  that  the  names  of 
members  capable  of  effective  service  in  planning  and  develop- 
ing the  projects  or  activities  may  be  presented  to  the  meeting. 
This  committee  may  contain  members  suggested  to  the  nominat- 
ing committee  by  the  official  county  board  of  commissioners  or 
supervisors,  the  grange,  the  farmers'  union,  the  equity,  the 
farmers'  clubs,  cooperative  associations,  county  fair,  schools, 
etc. 

The  executive  committee  is  usually  selected  so  that  practically 
all  sections  of  the  county  will  be  represented,  but  in  targe 
counties  with  inadequate  transportation  facilities  committeemen 
should  be  selected  who  can  attend  the  regular  (monthly)  meet- 
ings conveniently.  In  the  selection  of  a  committeeman  one  of 
the  chief  objects  should  be  to  secure  a  man  or  woman  whose 
qualifications  and  personal  interest  fit  him  or  her  to  plan  and  de- 
velop some  one  important  line  of  work  or  activity  of  the  bureau, 
such  as  farm-bureau  organization,  farm-bureau  publications, 
meetings,  exhibitions,  finance,  food-conservation  work,  crop  im- 
provement, live-stock  improvement,  farm  management,  supply- 
ing farm  labor,  cooperation  between  farmers'  clubs,  development 
of  better  marketing  facilities,  etc.  It  is,  therefore,  evident  that 
the  number  of  committeemen  will  depend  on  the  number  of  pro- 
jects or  activities  of  the  farm  bureau.  In  order  to  prevent  the 
committee  from  becoming  too  large  and  unwieldy,  a  committee- 


526  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

man  may  serve  as  the  project  leader  for  more  than  one  project, 
especially  for  projects  of  a  similar  character. 

Duties.  (1)  Signs  memoranda  with  State  extension  di- 
rector. 

(2)  Makes  up  financial  budgets. 

(3)  Secures  necessary  funds. 

(4)  Authorizes  the  expenditure  of  the  bureau's  money. 

(5)  Determines  the  policies  of  the  bureau. 

(6)  Considers  and  approves  programs  and  projects  recom- 
mended by  the  county  project  committees  and  by  members  of  the 
organization. 

(7)  Cooperates  with  the  State  agricultural  .college  and  the 
United  States  Department  of  Agriculture  in  the  development  of 
a  program  of  work,  the  details  of  projects,  and  the  employment 
of  county  agents,  home-demonstration  agents,  boys'  and  girls' 
club  leaders,  and  other  local  extension  workers  nominated  or  ap- 
proved by  the  State  extension  director. 

COMMUNITY   COMMITTEES 

Local  community  leadership  is  essential  to  the  success  of  the 
farm-bureau  movement.  Each  distinct  community  in  the  county 
should  have  a  community  committee  made  up  of  at  least  one  and 
preferably  three  to  five  local  representatives  or  local  leaders  of 
the  bureau.  The  number  of  committeemen  will  depend  on  the 
number  of  community  projects  or  activities. 

Method  of  Choosing.  Experience  has  indicated  that  until  the 
farm-bureau  has  become  permanently  established  in  the  county 
and  the  qualifications  of  a  community  committeeman  are  under- 
stood by  the  majority  of  the  members,  it  has  been  wise  to  have 
the  president  of  the  bureau  select  the  community  committeemen, 
each  to  direct  some  project  or  activity  of  the  bureau  in  the  com- 
munity. The  usual  practice  has  been  for  the  president,  in  con- 
sultation with  the  cooperatively  employed  agents  and  local  lead- 
ers and  subject  to  the  approval  of  the  executive  committee,  to  ap- 
point the  temporary  chairmen  of  the  committees.  If  the  grange 
or  other  local  club  or  organization  is  popular  with  the  rural 
people  in  the  community  and  is  active  in  promoting  the  im- 
provement of  agricultural  and  home  conditions,  the  officers 
of  such  organization  may  be  consulted  in  regard  to  the  appoint- 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS        527 

ment  of  a  temporary  chairman.  The  remainder  of  each  com- 
munity committee  has  usually  been  appointed  by  the  president 
on  recommendation  of  the  temporary  chairman,  executive  com- 
mitteeman,  or  the  agents,  after  a  careful  survey  of  community 
conditions  to  determine  the  chief  problems  needing  immediate 
attention.  Each  committeeman  should  be  selected  to  direct 
some  important  project  or  activity  of  the  organization  to  be 
undertaken  in  the  particular  community,  such  as  farm-bureau 
organization,  home  economics  demonstrations,  boys'  and  girls' 
club  work,  food  conservation,  supplying  farm  labor  and  seeds, 
live-stock  improvement,  etc.  Each  has  been  called  a  community 
project  leader. 

Before  community  committeemen  are  appointed  the  temporary 
community  chairman  should  hold  a  meeting  of  prospective  com- 
mitteemen at  his  home  at  which  the  following  steps  are  taken: 
A  community  map  should  be  prepared ;  a  more  detailed  survey 
of  community  conditions  made ;  projects  selected  and  approved ; 
a  promise  secured  from  each  prospective  committeeman  to  as- 
sume responsibility  for  a  project  or  activity;  and  a  permanent 
chairman  and  possibly  a  secretary  chosen.  Then  the  president 
should  notify  each  committeeman  in  writing  of  appointments  for 
a  period  of  one  year.  The  appointment  of  each  committeeman 
should  have  the  approval  of  the  executive  committee.  At  the 
end  of  the  year  the  president  should  appoint  committeemen  to 
assume  the  leadership  for  the  next  year's  projects.  It  is  usually 
desirable  to  retain  some  of  the  previous  year's  committeemen  for 
at  least  another  year,  in  order  that  the  personnel  of  the  com- 
mittee may  not  be  entirely  new. 

The  plan  of  having  all  farm-bureau  members  assemble  at  a 
central  point  in  the  community  for  the  purpose  of  studying  com- 
munity problems,  planning  a  program  of  work,  and  selecting 
project  leaders  to  be  appointed  by  the  president  as  committee- 
man,  has  been  tried  in  a  few  counties.  This  plan  has  seemed 
to  necessitate  the  attendance  at  each  meeting  of  the  president 
or  an  executive  committeeman  and  one  or  more  of  the  paid 
agents  of  the  organization,  in  order  that  the  policies  of  the 
organization  may  be  clearly  set  forth.  This  plan  has  been  more 
successful  in  counties  where  the  farm  bureau  has  been  organized 
for  some  time  and  the  work  has  become  well  established  and 


528  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY; 

understood  by  all  the  members.  The  farm  bureau  is  primarily 
a  county  and  not  a  community  organization ;  therefore,  from  the 
outset  nothing  should  be  done  to  give  the  wrong  impression. 
The  plan  of  having  farm-bureau  members  assemble  by  communi- 
ties to  elect  or  select  community  committeemen  has  not  been  pro- 
ductive of  the  best  results,  and  for  the  first  year  of  the  bureau 's 
existence  should  not  be  encouraged. 

Meetings.  As  many  meetings  of  each  community  committee 
should  be  held  as  are  needed  to  plan  and  execute  the  program 
of  the  community.  The  president  of  the  bureau,  accompanied 
by  one  or  more  of  the  agents,  and,  if  necessary,  by  one  or  more 
of  the  county  project  leaders,  should  always  attend  the  meet- 
ing of  the  committee  at  which  it  organizes  for  the  year.  Such 
officers,  project  leaders,  and  agents  as  are  needed  to  assist  in 
promoting  the  work  in  hand  in  the  community  should  attend 
other  meetings  of  the  local  committee.  Meetings  of  the  com- 
munity committees  should  be  encouraged  whenever  work  is  to 
be  discussed  or  undertaken  even  though  the  agents  or  county 
project  leaders  can  not  be  present.  This  will  tend  to  pro- 
mote the  plan  of  having  the  local  people  take  the  initiative  in 
matters  pertaining  to  the  community.  It  is  unwise,  however,  to 
encourage  chairmen  to  call  a  committee  meeting  unless  there  is 
need  of  such  meeting.  If  any  of  the  county  leaders  or  agents 
have  matters  of  unusual  importance  which  they  wish  to  present 
quickly  to  the  community  committees,  sectional  meetings  of  sev- 
eral committees  may  be  held,  especially  if  the  problems  of  the 
communities  are  similar. 

At  least  once  a  year  each  community  committee  should  hold 
a  business  meeting  to  which  the  farm-bureau  members  residing  in 
the  community  are  invited. 

After  a  definite  program  of  work  has  been  formulated,  and 
each  community  committeeman  has  agreed  to  assume  respon- 
sibility for  some  part  of  the  program,  fewer  meetings  will  suffice. 
For  instance,  if  the  State  or  county  leader  of  cooperative  pur- 
chasing and  marketing  work  visits  a  community  to  promote  the 
interests  of  such  work,  he  will  need  to  consult  only  with  the 
community  committeeman  who  heads  some  phase  of  this  project 
in  the  community,  unless  it  involves  a  decided  change  in  the 
community  program,  in  which  case  it  may  be  desirable  for  them 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         529 

to  present  the  matter  to  the  whole  committee.  The  same  would 
be  true  of  other  special  lines  of  work,  such  as  food-conservation 
work,  farm-management  demonstrations,  live-stock  work,  etc., 
whenever  the  count}^  leaders  on  each  line  of  work  wish  to  pro- 
mote the  interests  of  particular  projects  in  the  community. 

Duties.  (1)  To  determine  and  discuss  local  problems,  to 
assist  in  the  formation  of  a  county  program  of  work,  and  to 
adapt  this  program  locally,  thereby  formulating  a  community 
program  of  work  which  eventually  will  solve  the  local  problems. 

(2)  To  secure  for  the  community  the  desired  community  and 
individual  assistance  in  solving  local  problems  by  arranging  for 
at  least  one  winter  meeting  and  one  summer  demonstration  meet- 
ing and  for  a  few  definite  field,  barn,  and  home  demonstra- 
tions. 

(3)  To  secure  for  the  farm  bureau  the  active  support  of  the 
community  by  informing  the  residents  of  its  organization,  pur- 
poses, and  work ;  by  arranging  the  details  and  advertising  local 
meetings,  demonstrations,  etc. ;  and  by  soliciting  and  securing 
memberships. 

Privileges.  Community  committeemen  are  the  recognized 
leaders  of  the  farm  bureau 's  work  in  the  community.  They  are 
brought  into  frequent  contact  with  the  county  project  leaders, 
county  agents,  home-demonstration  agents,  boys'  and  girls'  club 
leaders,  and  other  extension  workers  and  specialists.  By  help- 
ing others  they  help  themselves  in  information,  inspiration,  and 
general  development. 

COUNTY  PROJECT   COMMITTEES 

As  soon  as  a  project  is  definitely  adopted  a  county  project 
committee  is  automatically  authorized  for  each  project.  Each 
project  or  important  activity  will  be  represented  by  a  county 
committee  composed  of  the  project  leader  on  the  executive  com- 
mittee as  chairman  and  the  project  leader  on  each  of  the  com- 
munity committees  which  has  formally  adopted  the  project  or 
activity. 

Purpose,  Duties,  and  Meetings.  To  be  most  effective  the 
executive  committee  should  not  contain  as  many  members  as 
would  be  required  to  give  representation  to  each  rural  com- 
munity. In  order  that  every  organized  community  may  have 


530  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY. 

direct  representation  in  planning  the  county  program  of  work 
and  representing  the  policies  of  the  organization,  meetings  of 
the  project  committees  should  be  called  by  their  respective  chair- 
men. Such  meetings  are  desirable  if  the  unity  of  the  county 
organization  is  to  be  preserved.  Usually  at  least  one  meeting  of 
each  committee  should  be  held  each  year  to  discuss  the  recom- 
mendations made  by  the  various  community  committees,  and  to 
recommend  to  the  executive  committee  a  yearly  county  program 
of  work,  or  to  suggest  the  making  of  such  changes  in  the  per- 
manent program  as  may  seem  necessary.  These  recommenda- 
tions will  supplement  those  of  the  members  made  in  the  answers 
to  the  questionnaires  sent  to  each  member  requesting  suggestions, 
or  those  made  by  the  members  at  the  annual  meeting.  The 
community  project  leaders  should,  of  course,  consider  the  sug- 
gestions in  their  respective  communities  before  making  definite 
recommendations.  Additional  meetings  of  project  committees 
are  desirable  if  important  matters 'arise  requiring  their  attention. 
Matters  concerning  only  a  few  communities  in  the  county  fre- 
quently arise,  in  which  case  only  the  project  leaders  represent- 
ing those  communities  need  to  be  called  together.  A  luncheon  is 
suggested  as  a  desirable  feature  of  at  least  one  of  the  meetings 
of  each  project  committee,  or  of  -a  general  meeting  of  all  com- 
mitteemen  in  the  county. 

HOW   TO   ORGANIZE   A   COUNTY 

The  assistance  of  a  trained  organizer  to  act  as  leader  of  the 
organization  campaign  may  be  secured  from  the  State  agri- 
cultural college  by  writing  the  State  director  of  agricultural 
extension.  Temporary  headquarters  should  be  provided  for  the 
organizer  at  the  most  centrally  located  place  in  the  county,  so 
that  he  may  keep  in  close  touch  with  the  progress  of  the  cam- 
paign in  every  community. 

The  organizer  will  assist  in  the  selection  of  a  temporary 
county  organization  committee  of  about  five  members  represent- 
ing all  sections  and  all  important  agricultural  and  home  in- 
terests in  the  county.  If  considered  advisable  a  meeting  of  a 
few  representative  men  and  women  from  each  community  may 
be  called  to  discuss  the  advisability  of  proceeding  with  the  or- 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS        531 

ganization  campaign  and  to  elect  a  temporary  organization  com- 
mittee. Each  committeeman  should  be  elected  because  of  special 
ability  to  direct  a  definite  part  of  the  preliminary  organization 
program,  such  as  publicity,  finance,  programs  for  local  and 
county  organization  meetings,  program  of  work  for  the  organi- 
zation, constitution,  and  by-laws,  etc. 

Plenty  of  good  publicity  matter,  in  the  form  of  a  series  of 
several  articles  giving  the  advantages  of  organization  in  general, 
the  history  of  the  farm-bureau  movement,  results  of  local  exten- 
sion work  in  neighboring  counties,  need  of  an  organization  to  co- 
operate with  the  Government  and  the  State  in  the  employment 
of  trained  workers,  plans  for  starting  the  work  in  this  county, 
and  the  progress  of  the  campaign,  should  be  given  to  the  local 
press  at  opportune  times. 

(1)  The  organizer  should  explain  farm-bureau  work  carefully 
and  suggest  the  organization  plan. 

(2)  He  should  secure  the  committee's  approval  of  the  plan 
and  its  help  in  working  out  the  details  to  meet  local  conditions. 

(3)  The  committee  should  decide  on  a  definite  date  for  the 
completion   of   the   membership    campaign   and   the   necessary 
number  of  members  to  be  secured  before  that  date. 

(4)  The  location  of  the  temporary  community  committeemen 
may  be  indicated,  as  each  is  selected  by  the  county  committee 
on  an  outline  map  of  the  county,  showing  the  approximate  com- 
munity boundaries.     In  considering  prospective  candidates  for 
the  community  committees  their  qualifications  for  effective  serv- 
ice on  the  permanent  community  committees  for  the  ensuing 
year,  as  well  as  for  temporary  service,  should  be  discussed.     In 
so  far  as  possible  the  number  of  members  to  be  secured  in  each 
community  should  be  decided  and  indicated  on  the  map. 

(5)  The  county  committeemen  should  give  the  organizer  per- 
mission to  use  their  names  in  sending  letters  to  local  committees, 
in  newspaper  articles,  etc. 

(6)  Definite  arrangements  should  be  made  with  each  member 
of  the  county  committee  to  attend  the  meetings  of  the  temporary 
community  committees  where  he  can  render  the  most  service. 

(7)  As  far  as   possible,   each   county  committeeman  should 
understand  his  or  her  part   of  the  preliminary   organization 


532  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

program,  such  as  publicity,  finances,  programs  for  local  and 
county  organization  meetings,  program  of  work  for  the  organi- 
zation, constitution  and  by-laws,  etc. 

ORGANIZATION   OF   TEMPORARY   COMMUNITY   COMMITTEES 

(1)  Arrangements  should  be  made  by  telephone  with  the  pros- 
pective chairman  of  each  community  committee  to  hold  a  meet- 
ing of  the  committee  at  his  home.     Ask  him  to  communicate  with 
the  other  prospective  committeemen,  inviting  them  to  attend  the 
meeting. 

(2)  These  telephone  calls  should  be  supplemented  by  per- 
sonal letters  signed  by  one  of  the  members  of  the  county  com- 
mittee.    It  is  best  not  to  discuss  the  purpose  of  the  meeting  other 
than  to  suggest  that  advice  is  needed  in  determining  matters  of 
great  interest  to  the  farmers  in  the  community. 

(3)  The  organizer,  accompanied  by  the  county  committeeman 
who  can  be  of  most  assistance  in  each  community,  should  meet 
with  each  committee  in  its  own  community,  or,  if  time  does  not 
permit,  in  a  sectional  meeting  of  the  committees  of  several  con- 
tiguous communities. 

(4)  At  this  meeting  the  purpose  of  the  organization  and  its 
relation  to  extension  work,  including  work  with  farm  men  and 
women,  and  young  people,  and  plans  for  organizing  the  county, 
should  be  explained  carefully  by  means  of  charts,  maps,  and 
blackboard.     Definite  plans  for  the  campaign  in  the  community 
should  be  made  and  a  definite  promise  to  serve  as  committee- 
men  during  membership  campaign  secured  from  each  prospective 
committeeman. 

COMMUNITY   ORGANIZATION    MEETINGS 

Following  the  committee  meetings,  an  organization  meeting 
should  be  held  in  each  community  at  which  the  leader,  and 
county  and  community  committeemen,  should  explain  county 
farm-bureau  work  and  the  importance  of  having  a  large  per- 
centage of  the  men  and  women  of  the  farms  to  cooperate  in  its 
work  as  members  of  the  farm  bureau.  During  a  recess  the  local 
committeemen,  already  provided  with  membership  cards  and 
membership  badges,  should  solicit  members. 

The  local  committeemen  should  then  take  the  names  of  those 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         533 

not  present  at  the  meeting  and  arrange  to  visit  each  one  per- 
sonally on  the  farm,  and,  if  possible,  secure  his  membership. 
On  the  suggestion  of  the  community  committee  the  organiza- 
tion meeting  may  be  omitted  and  only  the  farm-to-farm  member- 
ship campaign  be  used. 

Invitations  signed  by  one  or  more  members  of  the  county  com- 
mittee should  be  sent  to  all  members  to  attend  the  county-wide 
organization  meeting.  Each  should  be  urged  to  invite  all  in- 
terested persons  to  accompany  him.  The  letter  should  also  con- 
tain an  addressed  return  postal  card  bearing  the  following 
questions : 

What  do  you  want  the  farm  bureau  to  do  (1)  for  you  or  your 
farm?  (2)  for  you  in  your  home?  (3)  for  your  community? 
(4)  for  your  county? 

The  answers  to  the  questions  should  be  tabulated  by  the 
program-of-work  committee  and  used  at  the  county  meeting  as 
a  basis  for  discussing  a  county  program  of  work. 

COUNTY-WIDE   ORGANIZATION    MEETING 

(1)  Several   committeemen   should   line   up   outside  the  en- 
trance to  the  meeting  place  to  secure  additional  members.     They 
should  be  well  provided  with  badges*  membership  cards,  receipts, 
etc. 

(2)  A  constitution  and  by-laws  should  be  adopted. 

(3)  A  permanent  program  of  work  should  be  planned. 

(4)  Officers  and  executive  commit eemen  should  be  elected  for 
a  period  of  one  year.     (Each  officer  and  committeeman  should  be 
elected  because  of  special  fitness  to  head  some  important  project 
of  the  organization.) 

(5)  Good  music  and  at  least  one  interesting  speaker  should  be 
provided. 

DEVELOPMENT   OF   PERMANENT    COUNTY   ORGANIZATION 

Following  the  county  organization  meeting  the  permanent  or- 
ganization should  be  perfected  according  to  the  plan  stated  in 
this  circular  and  the  officers  and  committeemen  carefully  trained 
for  effective  service. 


534  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

EXECUTIVE   COMMITTEE   MEETINGS 

At  succeeding  meetings  of  the  executive  committee  arrange- 
ments should  be  made  for  suitable  office  quarters  and  equipment, 
and  cooperatively  employed  agents,  such  as  a  county  agent,  a 
home-demonstration  agent,  a  boys'  a"nd  girls'  club  leader,  etc., 
representing  the  organization,  the  State  agricultural  college, 
and  the  United  States  Department  of  Agriculture  should  be 
engaged.  Following  the  arrival  of  one  or  more  of  these  agents 
in  the  county,  the  committee  should  formulate  a  definite  program 
of  work  and  arrangements  should  be  perfected  for  the  holding 
of  community  committee  meetings  for  the  purpose  of  formulat- 
ing community  programs  of  work.  As  fast  as  suitable  com- 
munity project  leaders  can  be  found,  they  should  be  appointed 
in  writing  by  the  president  with  the  approval  of  the  executive 
committee. 

ORGANIZATION    AND    MEETINGS    OP    PERMANENT    COMMUNITY 
COMMITTEES 

At  the  first  meeting  of  the  prospective  community  committee 
in  each  community  a  community  map  should  be  made  on  which 
will  be  located  the  community  center,  schoolhouses,  churches, 
farmers'  organizations,  roads,  farm-bureau  committeemen,  and 
members.  Community  problems  should  be  studied  and  a  com- 
munity program  of  work  planned  to  solve  these  problems. 
Definite  plans  for  winter  and  summer  meetings  should  be  made 
at  this  time  or  at  a  succeeding  meeting  of  the  committee.  Charts 
showing  the  relationship  the  organization  sustains  to  the  State 
agricultural  college  and  the  United  States  Department  of  Agri- 
culture and  charts  showing  the  organization  of  the  farm-bureau 
should  be  prepared.  Reasons  for  membership  in  the  organiza- 
tion should  be  considered  and  plans  made  for  increasing  it. 
(See  Circular  3,  Office  of  Extension  Work  North  and  West, 
States  Relations  Service,  for  a  more  detailed  explanation  of 
holding  community  committee  meetings,  making  community 
maps,  etc.) 

Chairmen  of  project  committees  should  call  meetings  as  needed 
to  discuss  matters  relating  to  their  projects,  to  make  plans,  etc. 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         535 

HOW  TO  EXPAND  A  FARM-BUREAU  HAVING  ONLY  AN  AGRICULTURAL 
PROGRAM  TO  INCLUDE  HOME  DEMONSTRATION  AND  BOYS'  AND 
GIRLS'  CLUB  WORK 

A  meeting  of  the  executive  committee  of  the  farm  bureau 
should  be  called  to  consider  the  advisability  of  expanding  the 
organization,  and  to  appoint  temporary  executive  committee- 
men  to  represent  the  home-demonstration  work  and  boys'  and 
girls'  club  work.  The  home-economics  representative  should  be 
a  prominent  and  influential  countrywoman  of  the  county  who 
seems  well  fitted  to  promote  this  phase  of  the  work.  The  club 
representative  may  be  the  county  superintendent  of  schools  or 
other  person  interested  in  boys'  and  girls'  club  work.  At  the 
suggestion  of  the  home-economics  representative  and  of  other 
interested  people  an  influential  countrywoman  should  be  ap- 
pointed in  each  community  where  home-economics  work  is  to 
be  promoted,  as  a  temporary  member  of  the  community  com- 
mittee. The  same  general  plan  should  be  followed  in  selecting 
a  club  representative  in  each  community.  The  temporary 
executive  committeeman  for  home-demonstration  work  will  call 
a  meeting  of  the  community  representatives  on  home  economics 
to  discuss  the  agricultural  program  and  adapt  as  much  of  it 
to  their  own  work  as  possible.  Additional  projects  may  be 
selected  and  recommendations  made  to  the  executive  committee 
for  the  appointment  of  additional  project  leaders  to  serve  in 
a  temporary  capacity  on  the  executive  committee  until  the  next 
annual  meeting  of  the  farm  bureau.  If  deemed  advisable,  plans 
may  also  be  made  to  conduct  a  campaign  to  increase  the  member- 
ship of  women  in  the  bureau.  The  plans  should  be  submitted 
to  the  executive  committee  for  approval.  The  county  campaign 
should  be  in  charge  of  the  executive  committee  of  the  bureau 
and  the  campaign  in  a  community  in  charge  of  the  community 
committee.  Naturally  the  work  will  be  largely  delegated  to  the 
women  members  of  the  executive  and  community  committees. 

The  county  club  representatives  should  call  a  meeting  of  the 
community  club  representatives  to  discuss  the  agricultural  and 
home-economics  program  in  order  to  determine  what  club  work 
should  be  undertaken  in  the  county.  If  the  project  leaders 
already  at  work  are  in  sympathy  with  club  work,  no  additional 


536  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

project  leaders  other  than  the  temporary  project  leader  <need  be 
selected.  The  club  representative  will  look  after  the  organiza- 
tion of  clubs,  calling  on  other  project  leaders  for  needed  help. 

Each  community  committee  should  meet  to  consider  the  ad- 
visability of  expanding  the  committee  to  include  the  other 
phases  of  the  work.  Probably  not  all  communities  will  care  to 
undertake  the  three  lines  of  work  the  first  year,  but  if  addi- 
tional projects  are  selected,  names  of  additional  community  pro- 
ject leaders  should  be  submitted  to  the  president  for  appoint- 
ment as  members  of  the  community  committees.  The  com- 
munity committee  should  decide  as  to  the  advisability  of  pro- 
moting a  membership  campaign  in  the  community  to  increase 
the  membership  of  the  women  of  the  community. 

At  the  next  annual  meeting  of  the  farm  bureau  the  con- 
stitution should  be  changed  so  it  will  cover  the  new  phases  of 
the  work,  one  program  of  work  adopted,  and  officers  and  com- 
mitteemen  selected,  each  to  be  responsible  for  some  part  of  the 
program. 


D.    VOLUNTARY  ORGANIZATION 
FARMERS'  SOCIAL  ORGANIZATIONS1 

KENYON    L.    BUTTERFIELD 

IN  a  word,  then,  a  farmers'  organization  is  a  combination  of 
a  considerable  number  of  farmers,  over  a  fairly  wide  area,  for 
some  large  general  purposes  of  supposed  value  to  farmers  as  a 
class. 

Value  and  Need  of  Farmers'  Organization.  (1)  Organiza- 
tion is  a  powerful  educational  force.  If  it  accomplished  no  other 
result  it  would  be  worth  all  it  costs.  Every  cooperative  effort 
among  farmers  stimulates  discussion,  arouses  interest  in  funda- 
mental questions,  makes  abstract  questions  concrete  and  vivid, 
trains  individuals  in  self-expresssion. 

(2)  Other  classes  are  organized.  Business,  the  trade,  the 
professions  are  all  organized  to  some  degree  for  many  purposes — 

i  Adapted  from  Bailey,  L.  H.,  Cyclopedia  of  American  Agriculture,  Vol. 
IV:  289-297. 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         537 

cultural,  political,  sociable,  industrial.  It  is  reasonable  to  sup- 
pose both  that  these  organizations  flourish  because  they  serve  a 
human  need,  and  that  if  valuable  for  others  than  farmers  they 
will  be  of  aid  to  farmers.  The  element  of  self-defense  inevitably 
enters  in  also.  An  organization  is  sure  to  be  utilized  for  the 
particular  advantage  of  the  group  or  class  represented  by  it. 
If  there  comes  a  clash  of  class  interests  the  unorganized  class 
must  suffer  from  the  concentrated  power  of  the  group  co- 
operation of  its  opponents.  In  the  group  competitions  sure  to 
arise,  the  farmers  need  the  strength  that  organization  confers, 
for  securing  legitimate  group  advantages,  for  defense  against  the 
aggressions  of  other  groups,  and  for  utilizing  the  class  strength 
in  the  general  public  interest.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  assert 
that  organization  multiplies  manifold  the  powers  of  any  class  of 
people.  It  was  perhaps  true,  when  the  great  majority  of  our 
people  lived  on  the  soil,  that  organization  for  farmers'  interests 
was  unnecessary.  Now,  that  the  farming  class  is,  relatively  to 
other  classes,  losing  ground  it  becomes  imperative  that  they  shall 
combine  their  individual  strength. 

(3)  The  general  tendency  of  the  age  toward  social  self-direc- 
tion ;  which  is  another  way  of  stating  more  formally  and  scien- 
tifically, and  which  presses  a  little  farther,  the  argument  just 
advanced  that  farmers  must  organize  because  other  classes  are 
organized.     This  process  is  not   to  be  out   of  mere   imitation. 
Society,  as  a  whole,  is  more  and  more  the  helmsman  of  its  own 
fate.     This  is  accomplished  at  present  not  by  a  unified  campaign, 
by  society  as  a  whole,  for  some  distinct  social  goal,  but  by  the 
attempts  of  separate  groups,  often  apparently  antagonistic  to 
one  another,  to  seek  group  or  class  interests  or  to  endeavor 
to  fix  upon  society  the  special  idea  or  ideal  of  the  group.     It 
becomes   then   necessary   for   the   self-interest   of   society   as   a 
whole,  as  well  as  for  the  class  itself,  that  our  farmers  shall 
seek  thi'ough  organization  to  give  wing  to  their  best  ambitions 
for  the  benefit  of  society,  as  well  as  to  determine  the  direction 
which  rural  progress  itself  shall  take. 

(4)  Organization,   in  the  light  of  the  social  principle  just 
enunciated,  becomes  then  a  test  of  class  efficiency.     Has  a  class 
initiative,   self-control,   capacity  for  leadership,   ability  to  act 
cooperatively   and   fraternally,   social   vision,   true   patriotism? 


538  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

The  activities  of  the  class  organization  will  answer  the  questions. 

(5)  Organizations  tend  in  the  same  way  to  preserve  as  well 
as  to  test  the  social  efficiency  of  the  farming  class,  and  hence 
become  a  vital  factor  in  the  rural  problem,  which  is  nothing  more 
or  less  than  the  preservation  and  strengthening  of  the  status  of 
the  rural  people,  industrially,  politically,  socially. 

Possible  Disadvantages  of  Farmers'  Organizations.  (1)  They 
may  tend  to  emphasize  undesirable  class  distinctions  and  foster 
class  antagonisms.  It  is  to  be  remarked  that,  in  the  development 
of  society,  these  group  competitions  are  inevitable.  Tempo- 
rarily they  may  be  antagonistic  and  rival;  ultimately  they  can 
and  must  be  supplemental,  cooperative,  seeking  the  general  good. 
But  farmers  are  a  class.  They  have  special  interests.  They 
simply  cannot  maintain  their  common  rights  unless  they  invoke 
the  power  that  springs  from  class  organization.  The  danger 
of  undue  class  distinction  can  be  obviated  by  the  -full  recog- 
nition of  the  fact  that  each  social  group  or  class  has  duties  as 
well  as  rights.  Farmers  must  be  led  to  unite  their  class  power 
for  the  national  welfare.  This  is  one  of  the  chief  functions 
of  farmers'  organizations. 

(2)  Organizations  may  be  unwisely  led,  or  advocate  impossible 
things.     This  is  a  real  danger ;  it  is  not  a  final  argument  against 
organization.  '  The  child  blunders  day  in  and  day  out  in  its 
education.     A  social  group  is  sure  to  do  the  same.     It  is  the 
only  road  to  wisdom,  social  as  well  as  individual.     Education, 
experience  and  time  will  tend  to  adjust  these  difficulties  and 
minimize  the  dangers. 

(3)  There  may  be  over-organization,  and  the  individual  may 
lose  his  identity.     This  is  also  a  real  danger  in  our  day  among 
all  classes.     It  is  less  likely  to  be  serious  among  farmers  because 
of  their  strong  tendency  to  individual  independence. 

Difficulties  in  Organizing  Farmers.  (1)  The  ingrained 
habits  of  individual  initiative.  For  generations  American 
farmers  have  been  trained  to  rely  upon  themselves.  The  farm 
family  was  for  many  decades  an  industrial  as  well  as  a  social 
unit,  and  indeed  it  is  so  to  a  large  degree  even  to-day.  The 
pioneer  farmers  developed  some  rude  forms  of  cooperation  in 
the  neighborhood  life,  but  each  man  was  responsible,  almost  as 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         539 

much  as  is  the  hunter,  for  his  own  success.  This  experience 
has  become  a  habit  of  mind  not  easily  bent  to  the  needs  of 
cooperative  effort.  So  strong  is  this  trait  that  it  has  produced 
in  many  cases  a  type  of  man  actually  unsocial,  unwilling  as  well 
as  unaccustomed  to  work  with  and  for  his  fellows.  Neighbor- 
hood jealousies  and  feuds  in  the  rural  communities  are  proverbial. 
Farmers  seem  to  be  extremely  suspicious  of  others'  motives. 
Not  seldom  will  they  refuse  the  primacy  of  leadership  to  one 
of  their  own  class.  They  have  been  known  to  repudiate  the 
bargains  of  a  cooperative  pact  for  the  sake  of  individual  tem- 
porary gain ;  such  action  was  unsocial  rather  than  immoral, 
but  it  is  disastrous  to  organized  effort. 

(2)  Financial  considerations.     Economic  pressure  has  created 
a  desire  to  secure  financial  relief  or  gain,  and  if  cooperation 
would  accomplish  that  it  would  be  welcomed.     But  too  often 
the  large  view  of  the  educational  and  social  features  of  rural 
organizations  has  been  lost  sight  of,  and  the  farmer  has  refused 
to   contribute  to  a  movement  with  such  intangible   aims   and 
distant  results.     lie  wanted  to  see  where  even  his  slight  invest- 
ment of  time  and  money  was  going  to  bring  him  its  harvest. 
Farmers  have  not  appreciated  what  the  economist  calls  ' c  culture- 
wants.  " 

(3)  Economic     and     political     delusions.     The     history     of 
farmers'  organizations  in  the  United  States  shows  that  the  great 
"farmers'  movements"  have  gained  much  of  their  power  be- 
cause there  existed  an  intense  belief  in  certain  economic  and 
political  ideas  which  seemed  to  promise  release  from  what  the 
farmers  honestly  felt  to  be  industrial  bondage.     These  ideas 
strike  at  real  evils,  but  in  an  extreme  form  at  least  proved 
inefficacious,    are    considered    by    students    to    be    intrinsically 
unsound,  and  indeed  have  always  been  regarded  by  a  large  pro- 
portion of  leading  farmers  as  unsound.     These  delusions  were 
mainly  three:  (a)  that  the  middleman  may  be  entirely  abolished 
and  that  farmers  as  well  as  producers  may  sell  to  customers 
without  the  intervention  of  a  third  party,  and  as  consumers 
may  also  produce  for  themselves  cooperatively,     (b)   That  un- 
satisfactory business  conditions  are  almost  wholly  due  to  faulty 
legislation,  and  that  a  farmers'  party  is  not  only  feasible,  but 


540  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

is  necessary  in  view  of  the  way  by  which  other  interests  have 
secured  special  legislative  privileges,  (c)  That  a  satisfactory 
money  can  be  made  by  government  fiat. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  these  questions.  They  are 
set  down  as  delusions  because  as  practical  propositions  they  have 
not  been  made  to  work  to  advantage  to  the  farmers.  It  must 
not  be  supposed  that  all  farmers'  organizations  have  urged  these 
views,  nor  indeed  that  the  majority  of  American  farmers  have 
believed  in  them.  But  they  have  all  been  proposed  as  measures 
of  relief  for  real  difficulties;  they  have  never  worked  results 
permanently  helpful  to  farmers,  and  they  have  wrecked  every 
farmers'  organization  thus  far  that  has  pinned  its  faith  to 
them. 

(4)  Lack  of  leadership.     Organization  among  any  large  group 
of  people  means  leadership.     The   farm   has  been   prolific   of 
reformers,  fruitful  in  developing  organizers,  but  scanty  in  its 
supply  of  administrators.     It  has  had  the  leadership  that  could 
agitate  a  reform,  project  a  remedial  scheme,  but  not  much  of 
that  leadership  that  could  hold  together  diverse  elements,  ad- 
minister large  enterprises,  steer  to  great  ends  petty  ambitions. 
The  difficulties  of  such  leadership  are  many  and  real.     But  it 
is  to  be  doubted  if  the  business  of  small  farming  is  a  good 
training   ground   for   administrative   leadership.     At    any   rate 
few  great  leaders  have  appeared  who  have   survived   a  brief 
record  of  influence. 

(5)  Lack  of  unity.     A  difficulty  still  more  fundamental  re- 
mains to  be  mentioned.     The  farmers  of  America  have  never 
been  and  are  not  to-day  a  unit  in  social  ideals,  economic  needs 
or  political  creeds.     The  crises  that  have  brought  great  farmers ' 
organizations  into  being  have  shown  the  greatest  diversity  of 
views  as  to  remedies  for  existing  ills,  and  in  most  cases  there 
has  not  been  in  any  farmers '  platform  sufficient  unanimity  about 
even  a  few  fundamental  needs  to  tide  the  organization  over  to 
the  time  when  a  campaign  of  education  could  have  accomplished 
the  task  of  unifying  diverse  views. 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS        541 


FARMERS'  CLUBS1 

A.    D.    WILSON 

WHAT  A  FARMERS'  CLUB  is 

A  FARMERS'  CLUB  is  an  organization  of  the  people  in  any  com- 
munity for  the  improvement  of  themselves,  their  homes,  and  their 
community.  It  should  include  in  its  membership  the  whole  fam- 
ily, men,  women,  and  children.  Two  or  more  families  may 
constitute  a  successful  farmers'  club,  but  it  is  best,  where  possible, 
to  include  all  of  the  people  in  the  community.  A  rural  school 
district  is  a  suitable  territory  to  be  covered  by  a  farmers'  club. 
Meetings  are  held  in  the  homes  of  the  members,  in  town  halls, 
or  schoolhouses.  There  are  many  advantages  in  having  the 
meetings  at  the  homes  of  the  members  wherever  it  is  practical  to 
do  so.  •  The  territory  should  be  small  enough  so  that  all  of  its 
members  can  conveniently  get  together. 


A  good,  active  farmers'  club  will  do  for  a  rural  community 
just  what  a  good,  active  commercial  club  will  do  for  a  village 
or  city,  namely,  it  will  tend  to  secure  the  united  influence  of 
the  community  to  bring  about  any  desired  improvement,  and 
further,  it  will  unite  the  community  to  oppose  anything  that 
is  not  for  its  best  interests.  We  can  conceive  of  no  way  in  which 
a  farmers'  club  can  be  detrimental  to  a  community,  while  we 
believe  that  there  are  at  least  three  ways  in  which  it  may  be 
helpful,  (1)  socially,  (2)  educationally,  and  (3)  financially. 

Social  Advantages 

People  are  essentially  social  beings.  They  are  not  usually 
happy  when  isolated,  and  do  not  develop  properly  except  in 
groups.  Life  on  the  farm  tends  to  keep  people  too  much  to 
themselves.  A  farmers'  club  that  will  bring  the  people  together 
monthly  or  semi-monthly  furnishes  a  very  desirable  change  from 

i  Adapted  from  Minnesota  Farmers'  Library,  Vol.  IV,  No.  10,  Extension 
Div.,  Univ.  of  Minnesota,  St.  Paul,  October,  1913. 


542  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  ordinary  routine  of  farm  life.  Every  one  is  interested  in 
making  the  most  of  himself  and  his  life.  An  important  part  of 
one's  pleasure  and  development  comes  from  meeting  people  and 
gaining  the  ability  to  mingle  with  them  freely,  without  which 
one  cannot  appear  at  his  best  or  get  the  most  out  of  life,  either 
socially  or  in  a  business  way. 

One  needs  to  get  away  from  his  own  work  and  home  and  get 
an  opportunity  to  see  it  from  a  different  angle.  As  a  rule,  one 
is  better  satisfied  with  his  own  conditions  when  he  sees  how 
others  live  and  do.  A  better  acquaintance  with  people  usually 
results  in  more  tolerance  for  their  shortcomings.  Many  times 
when  left  to  ourselves  we  begin  to  think  unkindly  of  our  neigh- 
bors, and  really  believe  they  are  not  what  they  should  be. 
Usually  a  closer  acquaintance  and  a  clearer  knowledge  of  their 
trials  and  struggles  shows  us  that  they  are  really  better  than 
we  had  thought  them  to  be.  A  community  in  which  people 
are  interested  in  each  other,  know  each  other,  and  are  boosting 
for  each  other  and  for  the  community,  is  a  much  better  place 
in  which  to  live  than  is  a  community  in  which  there  is  mutual 
distrust.  As  a  rule,  knowledge  of  one  another  increases  con- 
fidence. Play  is  an  important  part  of  one's  life.  One  cannot 
do  his  best  if  every  minute  is  devoted  to  work.  Relaxation  and 
pleasure  are  absolutely  essential  to  good  living.  Clubs  that  will 
bring  some  entertainment,  social  gatherings,  or  other  means 
of  amusement  into  the  community,  are  very  important. 

Educational  Advantages 

A  good  farmers'  club  may  be  of  the  greatest  possible  influence 
in  broadening  the  knowledge  of  its  members.  The  community 
has  more  information  than  any  one  of  its  farmers,  and  the  club 
meeting  tends  to  give  each  member  the  benefit  of  the  knowledge 
and  experience  of  every  other  member. 

Another  valuable  feature  of  the  club  and  club  programs  is 
the  fact  that  the  members  when  called  upon  to  speak  are  put 
on  record,  and  to  maintain  their  dignity  in  the  community 
they  must  live  up  to  that  record.  For  example:  if  a  farmer 
is  asked  to  tell  how  he  has  succeeded  in  raising  the  best  calves 
in  the  community,  he  will  certainly  state  the  very  best  method 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         543 

he  knows  of  raising  calves.  After  going  on  record  as  standing 
for  the  best  methods  known  in  calf -growing,  he  certainly  cannot 
consistently  do  less  than  put  into  practice  on  his  own  farm  the 
system  he  has  advocated.  He  has  established  his  own  standard, 
and  must  live  up  to  it. 

Club  Work  a  Stimulant  to  Study. — Being  called  upon  to 
present  various  topics  at  club  meetings  stimulates  study.  No 
one  farm  or  community  has  in  it  all  that  is  good  along  all  lines, 
and  being  forced  to  study  and  look  into  what  is  being  done  in 
other  places  increases  the  general  knowledge  of  the  community 
and  of  each  individual  therein. 

Outside  Talent  in  the  Meeting. — A  farmers'  club  may  increase 
the  general  knowledge  of  its  members  by  bringing  in  outside 
talent.  Business  and  professional  men  from  the  nearby  towns 
or  villages  can  be  prevailed  upon  to  address  the  club.  Speakers 
from  the  University  or  the  College  of  Agriculture  and  other 
public  institutions  may  be  secured  occasionally  to  bring  in  out- 
side ideas  and  inspiration. 

Community  Problems. — A  discussion  of  the  various  problems 
of  interest  to  the  community  always  tends  to  stimulate  every 
good,  live  citizen  to  desire  better  things,  and  to  make  a  greater 
effort  to  secure  them.  Any  one  who  has  confidence  in  people  and 
in  his  community  believes  that  almost  all  good  things  are  possible 
if  the  necessary  effort  and  determination  are  put  forth  to  secure 
them.  If  a  club  can  succeed  in  arousing  in  its  members  a  desire 
and  determination  for  improvement  in  the  community,  better 
schools,  better  roads,  better  homes,  better  live  stttck,  better  farms, 
and  better  people  are  all  possible. 

Financial  Advantages 

Business  is  now  done  in  this  country  on  a  large  scale.  Millions 
of  dollars  and  thousands  of  people  are  used  in  great  enterprises, 
A  farmer  usually  deals  with  people  representing  business  in- 
terests larger  than  his  own.  As  a  rule,  in  business  enterprises 
he  deals  with  men  who  have  the  advantage,  simply  because  the 
transaction  means  more  to  the  farmer  than  to  the  other  fellow 
in  his  wider  field.  For  example,  a  potato-buyer  in  a  community 
may  buy  ootatoes  from  200  farmers. '  What  is  100  per  cent,  of 


544  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

the  farmer's  business  represents  one-half  of  one  per  cent,  of 
the  potato-buyer's  business.  Consequently,  a  deal  that  means 
100  per  cent,  to  the  farmer  means  one-half  of  one  per  cent,  to 
the  potato-buyer,  and  because  the  deal  means  very  little  to  the 
buyer  and  very  much  to  the  farmer,  the  farmer  is  at  a  disad- 
vantage. Exactly  the  same  condition  prevails  in  purchasing  sup- 
plies. The  farmer  is  handicapped  because  of  the  small  amount 
of  business  he  is  doing.  A  farmer  who  can  use  two  dozen  self- 
binders  can  purchase  them  more  cheaply  than  the  man  who 
uses  but  one.  The  farmer  who  can  sell  many  carloads  of  farm 
products  of  one  class  can  get  a  better  price  for  his  products 
than  can  the  one  who  has  only  a  wagonload  or  less  to  market. 

COOPERATION  OR  PEASANTRY 

There  seems  to  be  but  two  solutions  to  the  problem  of  putting 
the  farmer  on  an  equal  business  basis  with  those  with  whom 
he  has  business  outside  of  the  farm.  One  is  to  increase 
the  size  of  the  average  farm;  the  other  is  to  unite  the 
interests  of  several  farmers  owning  farms  of  ordinary  size 
for  purposes  of  outside  contact,  in  both  buying  and  selling. 
The  latter  plan  is  decidedly  preferable,  because  it  does  not 
involve  the  landlord  and  tenant  or  landlord  and  hired-help  sys- 
tem, and  makes  possible  the  maintenance  of  the  family-sized  farm, 
which  is  probably  one  of  our  most  important  American  insti- 
tutions. Cooperation  will  help  to  make  possible  the  maintenance 
of  the  family-sized  farm,  operated  by  its  owner,  longer  than  it 
can  be  maintained  in  any  other  way. 

Economy  in  Cooperation 

Cooperation  in  marketing  and  in  buying  is,  we  believe,  essen- 
tial to  the  economical  distribution  of  products.  Large  quan- 
tities of  uniformly  good  products  can  be  sold  much  more  advan- 
tageously than  can  smaller  quantities  of  products,  each  sample . 
of  which  may  be  good  in  itself  but  which  when  brought  together 
are  not  uniform.  When  every  farm  was  manufacturing  its 
own  butter,  and  each  of  the  hundred  or  more  farmers  in  the 
community  was  trying  to  sell  butter  of  a  different  quality,  the 
price  of  butter  was  comparatively  low.  Where  butter  is  manu- 
factured in  one  plant,  the  manager  of  the  creamery  has  at  his 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         545 

disposal  large  quantities  of  a  uniform  product,  and  can  sell  at 
the  best  possible  price. 

If  the  products  of  a  community,  such  as  grain,  potatoes,  and 
live  stock,  can  be  made  uniform  by  cooperation  among  the  mem- 
bers of  the  community  in  production,  and  then  these  larger  quan- 
tities of  uniform  products  can  be  sold  by  one  man,  the  same 
advantages  that  come  to  the  large  farmer,  or  have  come  to  the 
dairy  industry  can  be  secured  in  other  enterprises  on  the  farm. 

Club  Promotes  Cooperation 

A  farmers'  club  is  the  logical  forerunner  of  cooperation.  In 
the  first  place,  it  gets  the  people  of  a  community  acquainted 
and  increases  the  confidence  of  each  in  the  other.  This  is  abso- 
lutely essential  to  successful  cooperation.  In  the  second  place, 
it  provides  a  logical  means  for  studying  carefully  any  enterprise 
that  it  is  proposed  to  undertake  cooperatively,  so  that  impractical 
undertakings  are  likely  to  be  avoided.  We  believe  the  farmers' 
club  is  a  vital  factor  in  promoting  cooperation  for  efficiency, 
because  it  is  not  organized  to  defeat  any  particular  class  of 
people  but  to  study  intelligently  any  problem  that  may  come 
up,  and  to  take  the  action  necessary  to  put  any  plan  decided 
upon  into  effective  operation. 

How  to  Organize  a  Club 

The  organization  of  a  club  is  not  complicated  or  difficult.  A 
good  way  to  start  the  movement  is  for  some  one  in  a  community 
who  is  interested  to  invite  two  or  more  of  his  neighbors  to  meet 
at  his  home  or  some  other  suitable  place.  If  an  interesting 
program,  including  singing  and  speaking  by  the  young  people, 
can  be  arranged,  so  much  the  better.  A  dinner  or  supper  should 
be  provided,  as  eating  together  does  more  than  any  other  one  thing 
to  break  down  reserve,  formality  and  distrust.  It  is  much 
easier  to  carry  out  a  movement  of  this  kind  after  a  good  meal 
has  been  served.  The  proposition  should  be  talked  over,  and  it 
is  well  if  a  considerable  proportion  of  those  present  have  dis- 
cussed the  matter  beforehand,  in  private  conversation.  No  one 
need  have  any  fear  of  joining  the  club,  because  there  is  no  stock 
sold  and  no  possibility  of  loss.  It  is  simply  a  mutual  under- 
standing that  the  people  in  the  community  will  take  up  collect- 


546  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

ively  questions  of  interest  to  the  community,  instead  of  struggling 
with  them  individually. 

MEETINGS 

Meetings  should  be  held  once  or  twice  a  month  during  the 
winter  and  as  frequently  as  possible  during  the  summer. 
Meetings  in  the  homes  of  the  members  have  at  least  two  ad- 
vantages: (1)  attendance  is  stimulated  by  the  feeling  of  obli- 
gation to  the  host  or  hostess,  and  (2)  the  knowledge  that  the 
club  is  soon  to  meet  on  a  given  farm  or  in  its  home  is  a  great 
stimulus  to  housecleaning  and  decoration  and  corresponding 
outdoor  activities. 

SUGGESTED   CONSTITUTION   AND   BY-LAWS 

The  following  simple  constitution  is  suggested  as  suitable,  but 
the  form  of  constitution  is  not  important: 

Constitution 
ARTICLE  I.  NAME  AND  OBJECT 

Section  1.  The  name  of  this  association  shall  be  the  Farmers' 
Club  of  

Sec.  2.  The  object  of  this  association  shall  be  to  improve  its 
members,  their  farms,  and  their  community. 

ARTICLE  II.  MEMBERSHIP 

Sec.  1.  Any  one  in  good  standing  may  become  a  member  of 
this  club  by  paying  the  annual  fee  of  $ 

Sec.  2.  When  the  head  of  a  family  joins  the  club  any  member 
of  his  family  may  become  an  active  member  without  paying 
additional  fees. 

Sec.  3.  One-third  of  the  active  members  shall  constitute  a 
quorum  for  doing  business  at  any  regular  meeting. 

ARTICLE  III.  OFFICERS 

Sec.  1.  The  officers  of  this  association  shall  consist  of  a  pres- 
ident, a  vice-president,  a  secretary,  and  a  treasurer.  They  shall 
be  chosen  because  of  their  business  ability  rather  than  their  pop- 
ularity. 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         547 

Sec.  2.  The  officers  of  the  club  -become  the  executive  board  and 
shall  constitute  the  program  committee. 

Sec.  3.  The  executive  board  may  call  a  special  meeting  at  any 
time  by  giving  three  days'  written  notice. 

Sec.  4.  The  officers  of  this  association  shall  be  elected  annually, 
and  by  ballot,  at  the  regular  annual  business  meeting,  and  shall 
hold  office  until  their  successors  have  been  elected  and  qualified. 

ARTICLE  IV.  MEETINGS 

The  club  shall  hold  an  annual  meeting  the 

Regular  meetings  of  this  club  shall  be  held  on  the 

of  each  month  at  the  home  of  some  member  or  at  such  place  as 
shall  be  designated  at  a  previous  meeting,  or  by  the  executive 
board. 

ARTICLE  V.  AMENDMENTS 

This  constitution  may  be  amended  at  any  regular  meeting  by 
a  two-thirds  vote  of  the  active  members. 

By-Laws 

Section  1.  The  duties  of  each  officer  named  in  the  constitution 
shall  be  such  as  usually  pertain  to  his  position. 

Sec.  2.  All  other  duties  shall  be  performed  by  the  executive 
and  program  committees. 

Sec.  3.  The  club  shall  aid  and  further  business  associations 
among  its  members;  particularly  such  associations  as  pertain 
to  the  purchase  of  necessary  supplies,  and  the  purchase  and 
management  of  live  stock  and  agricultural  and  garden  products. 

Sec.  4.  From  time  to  time  the  club  shall  give  entertainments 
and  hold  meetings. under  direction  of  the  program  committee, 
for  the  benefit  of  its  members  and  of  those  whom  they  may  invite 
to  attend. 

Sec.  5.  Any  members,  after  due  hearing,  may  be  expelled  from 
the  club  by  a  majority  vote  of  active  members  at  any  meeting, 
without  a  refund  of  dues. 

Sec.  6.  These  by-laws  may  be  amended  at  any  regular  meeting 
by  a  majority  vote  of  active  members  upon  one  month's  written 
notice. 


. . 


548  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


FORM    OF   PROGRAM   AND   ORDER   OF   BUSINESS 

1.  Meeting  called  to  order  by  presiding  officer 

2.  Instrumental  music  or  a  song  by  the  club 
3%  Roll  call  of  members  by  the  secretary 

Responses  should  take  some  other  form  than  the  mere  word 
present."  The  program  committee  or  the  president  should 
previously  designate  the  topic  of  response  for  roll  call.  The 
responses  should  be  entertaining  and  instructive,  but  not  too 
long.  The  following  topics  may  be  suggestive : 

What  I  Have  Done  for  the  Club  Since  the  Last  Meeting 
How  I  Have  Added  to  the  Value  of  my  Farm  This  Season 
What  I  Consider  my  Most  Profitable  Crop 

4.  Reading  and  approval  of  the  minutes  of  the  last  meeting 

5.  Recitation  by  one  of  the  younger  members 

6.  Discussion  of  timely  farm  topics  led  by  a  club  member  or 
some  other  speaker,  followed  by  questions  and  a  general  dis- 
cussion 

7.  Reading  or  music 

8.  Discussion  of  another  farm  or  household  topic  illustrated 
by  a  demonstration  if  possible 

9.  Question  box.     Timely  -and  practical  questions  should  be 
previously  prepared  by  members  and  placed  in  the  question 
box.     Each  question  should  be  read  and  answered  separately, 
the  president  calling  upon  some  member  or  members  to  answer 
them. 

10.  A  "For  Sale"  and  " Wanted"  box  may  also  be  provided. 
A  member  having  something  for  sale  or  wishing  to  buy  or  hire 
something  should  list  the  same  on  a  slip  of  paper,  sign  his  name, 
and  place  it  in  the  box.     These  slips  should  .all  be  read  at  some 
time  during  the  meeting.     An  exchange  of  these  lists  between 
clubs  will  be  mutually  helpful. 

11.  Reading  of  program  for  next  meeting 

12.  Report  of  executive  committee 

13.  'Unfinished  business 

14.  New  business 

15.  Closing  exercises  and  adjournment 

If  desirable,  the  program  may  be  divided  into  two  parts  by 
an  intermission.     Readings  and  recitations  may  be  of  a  humorous 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         549 

nature  to  add  life  to  the  program.  Variety  is  essential,  and 
whenever  possible  a  discussion  of  woman's  work  should  be  made 
a  prominent  feature  of  the  program. 

It  may  frequently  be  advisable  to  limit  the  time  devoted  to 
the  discussion  of  each  topic,  especially  if  speakers  are  likely  to 
waste  a  great  deal  of  time.  Matters  pertaining  to  the  welfare 
of  the  club  and  the  mutual  benefit  of  the  members  should  be 
given  constant  thought.  Debates  may  be  held  occasionally  to 
interest  the  young  people.  Where  clubs  include  the  entire  fam- 
ily in  the  membership,  a  basket  lunch  will  add  to  the  interest 
in  the  meeting,  but  it  should  be  simple  so  as  not  to  be  a  burden 
to  the  house-wives. 

The  main  point  to  consider  is  that  there  should  be  a  good, 
live,  snappy  meeting.  Short,  pointed  talks  followed  by  general 
discussions  are  very  much  better  than  long  talks.  Music,  humor- 
ous recitations  or  readings,  and  topics  of  general  interest,  as 
well  as  the  more  serious  business  problems  of  the  community, 
should  be  given  a  place  on  the  program.  The  monthly  topics 
furnished  by  the  Agricultural  Extension  Division,  University 
Farm,  St.  Paul,  will  be  found  helpful  in  preparing  the  pro- 
gram. 

WORK  TO  DO 

No  organization  can  exist  very  long  unless  it  is  doing  some- 
thing. From  the  start  the  club  must  be  made  of  value  to  the 
community  socially,  educationally,  or  financially,  and  in  any 
event  some  one  must  do  some  work.  As  a  rule,  those  who  do 
the  most  for  the  club  get  the  most  out  of  it.  The  regular  meet- 
ings, if  made  interesting,  will  be  made  valuable  socially  and 
educationally.  Every  class  of  people  in  the  neighborhood  or 
in  the  club  membership  should  be  considered  on  the  program. 
Wholesome  entertainment  is  often  as  important  as  profitable 
business. 

Pacemakers 

A  few  clubs  have  adopted  a  plan  of  appointing  pacemakers 
or  specialists  along  the  various  lines  of  interest  in  the  com- 
munity. The  following  list  is  suggestive  as  to  lines  of  work  and 
methods  of  procedure: 


550  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Road-Builder. — When  chosen,  it  shall  be  the  duty  of  the  road- 
builder  to  spread  the  gospel  of  good  roads  in  as  many  ways  as 
possible.  He  should  be  prepared  to  answer  all  road  questions 
that  may  come  up  at  club  meetings  or  at  other  times.  He  should 
endeavor  to  set  a  good  example  by  attention  to  all  highways 
adjacent  to  his  farm. 

It  is  suggested  that  he,  in  conjunction  with  the  other  club 
members,  designate  two  or  three  miles  of  adjacent  highways 
for  demonstration  purposes,  and  endeavor  to  make  it  as  good  as 
possible. 

Corn  Crank. — The  selection  of  the  corn  crank  should  be  made 
with  a  view  to  getting  some  one  who  is  enthusiastic  for  corn, 
and  who  has  made  a  marked  success  in  corn  growing.  He 
should  be  authority  on  the  varieties  to  be  planted;  the  prepara- 
tion of  the  seed  and  the  land ;  the  planting ;  and  the  subsequent 
cultivation.  He  should  have  a  corn-breeding  plat,  or  at  least 
a  seed-corn  plat.  His  field  of  corn  should  be  a  model  in  every 
way,  and  a  tribute  to  the  locality. 

Flower  Queen. — The  selection  of  a  flower  queen  should  be 
made  with  a  view  of  having  some  one  well  informed  in  the 
culture  of  flowers.  She  should  be  qualified  to  answer  questions 
concerning  this  work,  and  to  make  her  home  flower  garden  a 
demonstration  of  the  possibilities  in  flower  culture.  She  should 
be  capable  of  giving  advice  as  to  varieties  practical  for  farm 
growing,  and  easy  to  grow.  She  should  also  be  able  to  advise 
regarding  the  purchase  of  seed,  and  might  well  arrange  to  get 
up  club  orders  for  seeds. 

Dairy  Wizard. — The  man  selected  for  dairy  wizard  should 
be  a  man  who  has  a  dairy  herd  and  ample  opportunity  to  dem- 
onstrate methods  and  possibilities.  He  should  be  well  informed 
about  dairy  practices,  and  if  possible  should  arrange  to  keep  a 
daily  record  of  each  cow  in  his  herd. 

Alfalfa  Shark.— The  alfalfa  shark  should  grow  a  field  of 
alfalfa,  should  encourage  its  growth  by  others,  and  should  make 
himself  an  authority  on  its  culture,  curing,  and  use  in  his  com- 
munity. He  should  adopt  the  slogan,  "An  acre  or  more  of 
alfalfa  on  every  farm, ' '  and  should  preach  alfalfa  in  season  and 
out  of  season. 

Potato  King. — When  elected,  the  potato  king  is  expected  to 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         551 

set  the  pace  as  to  varieties  to  plant,  preparation  of  the  land, 
storing  and  preparation  of  the  seed,  time  of  planting,  culti- 
vating, harvesting,  and  marketing.  In  fact,  he  is  to  be  the 
club's  source  of  potato  information,  and  his  field  should  be  a 
demonstration  of  what  may  be  done  with  potatoes  in  the  locality. 

The  Booster. — The  booster  should  carry  the  responsibility  of 
arousing  community  spirit;  of  devising  various  ideas  that  will 
arouse  club  members  to  community  action ;  and  of  fostering  such 
movements  as  tend  to  attract  the  public  to  the  community  and 
to  the  club. 

Poultry -Keeper. — The  poultry-keeper  should  be  some  man  or 
woman  who  is  an  enthusiast  on  poultry.  His  duties  should  be 
to  maintain  an  up-to-date  poultry  plant,  and  to  be  informed 
on  the  general  care,  management,  and  improvement  of  poultry. 

Business-Getter. — The  man  chosen  for  business-getter  should 
be  especially  qualified  along  business  lines.  His  duties  should 
be  to  look  after  the  marketing  problems  of  the  club,  and  to  see 
what  steps  could  be  taken  to  enable  the  club  members  to  get 
their  supplies  most  economically. 

Home-Maker. — The  position  of  home-maker  should  be  filled  by 
some  woman  in  the  club  who  is  a  successful  home-maker  and 
who  can  spend  some  time  in  promoting  the  idea  of  better  homes 
in  the  community. 

It  is  proposed  that  each  club  arrange  to  select  several  pace- 
makers, and  that  each  pacemaker  plan  to  carry  on  some  demon- 
stration along  his  line  of  work.  The  Agricultural  Extension 
Division  will  assist  each  pacemaker  in  planning  his  duties  and 
his  demonstration  work.  It  is  suggested  further  that  the  club 
arrange  for  a  demonstration  day,  at  which  time  the  Extension 
Division  will  furnish  speakers,  the  pacemakers  will  present 
reports,  and  a  general  inspection  will  be  made  of  the  demon- 
strations and  the  club  work. 

It  would  be  entirely  practical  to  choose  as  many  pacemakers 
as  there  are  members  of  the  club,  assigning  to  each  one  some  par- 
ticular phase  of  the  community  activity  in  which  he  is  especially 
qualified.  Each  of  these  pacemakers,  by  specializing  on  one 
subject  for  a  few  months  or  for  the  year,  would  really  become 
very  proficient  in  that  line  and  be  able  to  be  of  great  help 
to  other  members  of  the  club.  These  pacemakers  should  be  ready 


552  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

at  all  times  to  take  part  in  the  program  and  present  briefly  some 
development  in  their  particular  line  of  work.  This  plan  has  been 
found  to  help  very  much  in  getting  up  good,  live  programs. 

COOPERATIVE  EFFORT  FOSTERED 

Some  of  the  following  undertakings  may  well  be  fostered  by 
the  farmers'  club.  The  producers  in  a  community  should  decide 
on  one  variety  of  potatoes  or  other  market  crop  to  produce,  and 
then  find  some  way  of  marketing  it  jointly.  One  or  two  leading 
breeds  of  each  kind  of  live-stock  should  be  adopted  by  the  club. 
Pure-bred  sires  may  be  purchased  and  used  cooperatively,  to  the 
advantage  of  every  one.  Feed,  flour,  cement,  and  other  supplies 
that  can  be  handled  in  large  lots,  may  be  purchased  cooperatively, 
usually  at  a  considerable  saving. 

The  question  of  organizing  a  live-stock  shipping  association  is 
worth  considering  where  live-stock  is  an  important  factor. 
Home  conveniences  and  a  beef  club  for  supplying  fresh  meat 
should  be  considered.  When  dairying  is  important,  the  organ- 
ization of  a  cow-testing  association  is  valuable.  In  any  neigh- 
borhood, community  effort  along  the  line  of  road  improvement 
is  worth  very  careful  consideration.  Such  matters  as  organ- 
izing a  creamer}^  cheese  factory,  or  farmers'  elevator,  the 
purchase  of  a  stallion,  or  the  introduction  of  a  general  drainage 
system  for  the  community,  should  be  considered  by  the  club 
and  acted  upon  only  after  all  the  facts  in  the  case  are  known. 
One  of  the  latest  attempts  of  a  farmers'  club  is  to  organize  a 
cooperative  laundry  in  connection  with  a  cooperative  creamery. 
In  short,  every  enterprise  connected  with  the  farms,  homes,  or 
schools  may  be  profitably  considered  by  the  club. 


DECLARATION  OF  PURPOSES  OF  THE  PATRONS  OF 
HUSBANDRY  * 

PREAMBLE 

PROFOUNDLY  impressed  with  the  truth  that  the  National  Orange 
of  the  United  States  should  definitely  proclaim  to  the  world  its 

i  From  a  pamphlet  issued  by  the  Grange. 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         553 

general  objects,  we  hereby  unanimously  make  this  Declaration 
of  Purposes  of  the  Patrons  of  Husbandry : 

GENERAL   OBJECTS 

1.  United  by  the  strong  and  faithful  tie  of  Agriculture,  we 
mutually  resolve  to  labor  for  the  good  of  our  Order,  our  country 
and  mankind. 

2.  We  heartily  endorse  the  motto  "In  essentials,  unity;  in 
non-essentials,  liberty;  in  all  things,  charity." 

SPECIFIC   OBJECTS 

3.  We  shall  endeavor  to  advance  our  cause  by  laboring  to 
accomplish  the  following  objects : 

To  develop  a  better  and  higher  manhood  and  womanhood 
among  ourselves;  to  enhance  the  comforts  and  attractions  of 
our  homes,  and  strengthen  our  attachments  to  our  pursuits ;  to 
foster  mutual  understanding  and  cooperation;  to  maintain  in- 
violate our  laws,  and  to  emulate  each  other  in  labor,  to  hasten 
the  good  time  coming;  to  reduce  our  expenses,  both  individual 
and  corporate ;  to  buy  less  and  produce  more,  in  order  to  make 
our  farms  self-sustaining;  to  diversify  our  crops  and  crop  no 
more  than  we  can  cultivate;  to  condense  the  weight  of  our  ex- 
ports, selling  less  in  the  bushel  and  more  on  hoof  and  in  fleece; 
less  in  lint,  and  more  in  warp  and  woof;  to  systematize  our  work 
and  calculate  intelligently  on  probabilities;  to  discountenance 
the  credit  system,  the  mortgage  system,  the  fashion  system,  and 
every  other  system  tending  to  prodigality  and  bankruptcy. 

We  propose  meeting  together,  talking  together,  working  to- 
gether, buying  together,  selling  together,  and,  in  general,  act- 
ing together  for  our  mutual  protection  and  advancement,  as  oc- 
casion may  require.  We  shall  avoid  litigation  as  much  as  pos- 
sible by  arbitration  in  the  Grange.  We  shall  constantly  strive 
to  secure  entire  harmony,  good  will,  vital  brotherhood  among 
ourselves,  and  to  make  our  Order  perpetual.  We  shall  earnestly 
endeavor  to  suppress  personal,  local,  sectional  and  national  prej- 
udices, all  unhealthy  rivalry,  all  selfish  ambition.  Faithful 
adherence  to  these  principles  will  insure  our  mental,  moral,  so- 
cial and  material  advancement 


554  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


BUSINESS   RELATIONS 

4.  For  our  business  interests,  we  desire  to  bring  producers 
and  consumers,  farmers  and  manufacturers  into  the  most  direct 
and  friendly  relations  possible.  Hence,  we  must  dispense  with 
a  surplus  of  middlemen,  not  that  we  are  unfriendly  to  them, 
but  we  do  not  need  them.  Their  surplus  and  their  exactions 
diminish  our  profits. 

We  wage  no  aggressive  warfare  against  any  other  interests 
whatever.  On  the  contrary,  all  our  acts  and  all  our  efforts, 
so  far  as  business  is  concerned,  are  not  only  for  the  benefit  of 
the  producer  and  consumer,  but  also  for  all  other  interests 
that  tend  to  bring  these  two  parties  into  speedy  and  economical 
contact.  Hence,  we  hold  that  transportation  companies  of 
every  kind  are  necessary  to  our  success,  that  their  interests 
are  intimately  connected  with  our  interests,  and  harmonious 
action  is  mutually  advantageous,  keeping  in  view  the  first  sen- 
tence in  our  declaration  of  principles  of  action,  that  ' '  individual 
happiness  depends  upon  general  prosperity." 

We  shall,  therefore,  advocate  for  every  state  the  increase  in 
every  practicable  way  of  all  facilities  for  transporting  cheaply 
to  the  seaboard,  or  between  home  producers  and  consumers 
all  the  productions  of  our  country.  We  adopt  it  as  our  fixed 
purpose  to  "open  out  the  channels  in  nature's  great  arteries, 
that  the  life-blood  of  commerce  may  flow  freely." 

We  are  not  enemies  of  railroads,  navigable  and  irrigating 
canals,  nor  of  any  corporation  that  will  advance  our  industrial 
interests  nor  of  any  laboring  classes. 

In  our  noble  Order  there  is  no  communism,  no  agrarianism. 

We  are  opposed  to  such  spirit  and  management  of  any  corpo- 
ration or  enterprise  as  tends  to  oppress  the  people  and  rob  them 
of  their  just  rights.  We  are  not  enemies  to  capital,  but  we 
oppose  the  tyranny  of  monopolies.  We  long  to  see  the  antagon- 
ism between  capital  and  labor  removed  by  common  consent,  and 
by  an  enlightened  statesmanship  worthy  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. We  are  opposed  to  excessive  salaries,  high  rates  of  inter- 
est, and  exorbitant  profits  in  trade.  They  greatly  increase  our 
burdens,  and  do  not  bear  a  proper  proportion  to  the  profits 
of  producers.  We  desire  only  self-protection,  and  the  protec- 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         555 

tion  of  every  true  interest  of  our  land,  by  legitimate  transac- 
tions, legitimate  trade  and  legitimate  profits. 


EDUCATION 

We  shall  advance  the  cause  of  education  among  ourselves, 
and  for  our  children,  by  all  just  means  within  our  power.  We 
especially  advocate  for  our  agricultural  and  industrial  colleges 
that  practical  agriculture,  domestic  science  and  all  the  arts 
which  adorn  the  home,  be  taught  in  their  courses  of  study. 

THE   GRANGE   NOT   PARTISAN 

5.  We  emphatically  and  sincerely  assert  the  oft-repeated 
truth  taught  in  our  organic  law,  that  the  Grange — National, 
State  or  Subordinate — is  not  a  political  or  party  organization. 
No  Grange,  if  true  to  its  obligations,  can  discuss  partisan  or 
sectarian  questions,  nor  call  political  conventions,  nor  nominate 
candidates,  nor  even  discuss  their  merits  in  its  meetings. 

Yet  the  principles  we  teach  underlie  all  true  politics,  all  true 
statesmanship,  and,  if  properly  carried  out,  will  tend  to  purify 
the  whole  political  atmosphere  of  our  country.  For  we  seek 
the  greatest  good  to  the  greatest  number. 

We  must  always  bear  in  mind  that  no  one,  by  becoming  a 
Patron  of  Husbandry,  gives  up  that  inalienable  right  and  duty 
which  belongs  to  every  American  citizen,  to  take  a  proper  inter- 
est in  the  politics  of  his  country. 

On  the  contrary,  it  is  right  for  every  member  to  do  all  in  his 
power  legitimately  to  influence  for  good  the  action  of  any  polit- 
ical party  to  which  he  belongs.  It  is  his  duty  to  do  all  he  can  to 
put  down  bribery,  corruption  and  trickery;  to  see  that  none 
but  competent,  faithful  and  honest  men,  who  will  unflinchingly 
stand  by  our  interests,  are  nominated  for  all  positions  of  trust ; 
and  to  have  carried  out  the  principle  which  should  always 
characterize  every  Patron  that 

THE  OFFICE  SHOULD  SEEK  THE  MAN,  AND  NOT  THE  MAN  THE  OFFICE. 

We  acknowledge  the  broad  principle  that  difference  of  opin- 
ion is  no  crime,-  and  hold  that  "progress  toward  truth  is  made 
by  differences  of  opinion,"  while  "the  fault  lies  in  bitterness 
of  controversy." 


556  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

We  desire  a  proper  equality,  equity  and  fairness;  protection 
for  the  weak;  restraint  upon  the  strong;  in  short,  justly  dis- 
tributed burdens  and  justly  distributed  power.  These  are 
American  ideas,  the  very  essence  of  American  independence, 
and  to  advocate  the  contrary  is  unworthy  of  the  sons  and 
daughters  of  an  American  republic. 

We  cherish  the  belief  that  sectionalism  is,  and  of  right  should 
be,  dead  and  buried  with  the  past.  Our  work  is  for  the 
present  and  the  future.  In  our  agricultural  brotherhood  and 
its  purposes  we  shall  recognize  no  North,  no  South,  no  East  and 
no  West. 

It  is  reserved  by  every  Patron,  as  the  right  of  a  freeman,  to 
affiliate  with  any  party  that  will  best  carry  out  his  principles. 

OUTSIDE   COOPERATION 

6.  Ours  being  peculiarly  a  farmers'  institution,  we  can  not  ad- 
mit all  to  our  ranks. 

Many  are  excluded  by  the  nature  of  our  organization,  not  be- 
cause they  are  professional  men,  or  artisans,  or  laborers,  but 
because  they  have  not  a  sufficiently  direct  interest  in  tilling  the 
soil,  or  may  have  some  interest  in  conflict  with  our  purposes. 
But  we  appeal  to  all  good  citizens  for  their  cordial  cooperation 
and  assistance  in  our  efforts  toward  reform,  that  we  may  event- 
ually remove  from  our  midst  the  last  vestige  of  tyranny  and 
corruption. 

We  hail  the  general  desire  for  fraternal  harmony,  equitable 
compromises  and  earnest  cooperation,  as  an  omen  of  our  future 
success. 

CONCLUSION 

7.  It  shall  be  an  abiding  principle  with  us  to  relieve  any  of 
our  oppressed  and  suffering  brotherhood  by  any  means  at  our 
command. 

Last  but  not  least,  we  proclaim  it  among  our  purposes  to 
inculcate  a  proper  appreciation  of  the  abilities  and  sphere  of 
woman  as  is  indicated  by  admitting  her  to  membership  and 
position  in  our  Order. 

Imploring  the  continued  assistance  of  our  Divine  Master  to 
guide  us  in  our  work,  we  here  pledge  ourselves  to  faithful  and 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         557 

harmonious  labor  for  all  future  time,  to  return  by  our  united 
efforts  to  the  wisdom,  justice,  fraternity  and  political  purity  of 
our  forefathers. 


E.    POLITICAL  OKGANIZATION 
THE  NATIONAL  NONP ARTISAN  LEAGUE  * 

(Beginning  in  North  Dakota  as  a  movement  of  farmers,  an  association 
now  calling  itself  the  "National  Nonpartisan  League"  is  attracting  wide 
attention  in  the  field  of  politics  and  economic  legislation.  We  present 
herewith  an  article  explaining  and  supporting  the  movement,  and  a  briefer 
one  from  the  standpoint  of  those  who  oppose  it.  Both  articles  are  written 
by  editors  of  ability  and  much  experience.  Mr.  John  Thompson  was  for 
eight  years  connected  with  the  New  York  Times  and  for  an  equal  period 
the  Managing  Editor  of  Pearson's  Magazine.  He  has  recently  gone  to  St. 
Paul  and  become  actively  connected  with  the  Nonpartisan  League.  Mr. 
W.  H.  Hunter,  who  criticizes  the  League,  is  Managing  Editor  of  the 
Minneapolis  Tribune.  He  has  had  wide  newspaper  experience,  having 
been  Managing  Editor  of  the  Washington  (D.  C.)  Post,  and  having  held 
similarly  important  positions  in  a  number  of  the  leading  newspaper  offices 
of  the  western  cities.  Mr.  Hunter  is  honest  in  opposing  the  Nonpartisan 
League  as  dangerous  and  reckless  in  its  socialistic  program,  while  Mr. 
Thompson  is  honestly  supporting  it  as  a  beneficent  movement. — THE 
EDITOR.  ) 

I.  THE  LEAGUE'S  WORK  IN  THE  NORTHWEST 

JOHN   THOMPSON 

THE  NONPARTISAN  LEAGUE  was  formed  in  North  Dakota  in  the 
spring  of  1915.  The  grain  buyers  had  instituted  and  controlled 
a  marketing  system  of  great  injustice  to  the  farmers.  The 
politicians,  controlling  the  State  machinery,  had  refused  to 
permit  the  votes  of  the  people  to  change  the  system.  The  league 
was  formed  to  overcome  these  things  and  to  give  to  the  farmers 
of  the  States  fair  marketing  facilities. 

ABUSES   IN   GRADING   AND   DOCKAGE 

The  principal  product  of  North  Dakota  is  wheat.  Wheat  for 
selling  is  classed  into  grades.  The  grading  for  North  Dakota 
and  for  the  whole  Northwest  had  been  done  by  the  grain 

i  Adapted  from  Review  of  Reviews,  Vol.  57,  397-401,  April,  1918. 


558  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

exchanges — in  short,  by  the  buyers.  It  has  been  shown  that 
between  September,  1910,  and  August,  1912,  the  terminal  ele- 
vators at  Minneapolis  received  15,571,575  bushels  of  No.  1 
Northern  Wheat,  and  that  during  that  same  period  these  same 
elevators  shipped  out  19,978,777  bushels  of  the  same  grade.  The 
elevators  had  no  wheat  of  this  grade  at  the  beginning  of  the 
period,  but  they  did  have  114,454  bushels  at  the  end. 

During  the  same  period  these  elevators  received  20,413,584 
bushels  of  No.  2  Northern  and  shipped  out  22,242,410  bushels. 

Thus  the  elevators  shipped  out  more  than  6,000,000  bushels 
of  the  two  higher  grades,  Nos.  1  and  2,  for  which  they  never  paid 
the  price  for  those  grades.  What  happened  is  this:  The  ele- 
vators graded  the  farmers'  wheat  down  to  3  and  4  when  they 
were  buying  it ;  when  they  were  selling  it,  more  than  6,000,000 
bushels  that  had  been  bought  as  3  and  4  were  sold  as  1  and  2. 
The  lower  grades  brought  prices  from  2  to  12  cents  per  bushel 
less  than  the  higher  grades.  On  examination,  statistics  show 
similar  results  in  other  years. 

Dockage  in  grain  is  another  effective  way  in  which  the  farmers 
were  robbed  of  their  crops.  There  has  been  a  dockage  valuation 
of  $30  and  $35  on  every  1000  bushels  of  wheat.  The  farmer 
pays  the  freight;  and  it  has  been  shown  before  a  Minnesota 
Legislative  Committee  that  for  more  than  ten  years  a  freightage 
overcharge  totaling  about  $5,000  a  month  has  been  collected  as 
switching  charges.  In  short,  grading  and  dockage  had  cost  the 
'farmers  of  North  Dakota  alone  millions  of  dollars  every  year. 


The  farmers  of  North  Dakota  thought  that  the  public  owner- 
ship of  elevators  would  help  them  to  get  fair  marketing  facilities. 
They  tried  for  ten  years  through  ordinary  political  channels 
to  get  the  State  to  build  elevators.  Twice  the  State  legislature, 
under  the  pressure  of  the  farmers,  instituted  amendments  to 
the  constitution  permitting  the  State  to  build  elevators. 

Twice  the  people  of  the  State,  by  an  enormous  majority  each 
time,  confirmed  the  proposed  amendment.  Twice  the  machinery 
of  the  State  government  refused  to  obey  the  people 's  will.  The 
last  refusal  was  during  the  legislative  session  of  1915.  Hun- 
dreds of  farmers  went  to  the  State  Capitol  in  an  effort  to 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         559 

impress  upon  the  lawmakers  the  sentiment  of  the  people  of  the 
State.  They  were  told  to  "go  home  and  slop  the  pigs."  The 
politicians  said  that  they  knew  what  was  good  for  the  farmer 
— he  didn't;  let  him  do  what  he  knew  how  to  do — "slop  the 
pigs." 

A   LEAGUE  WITHOUT   " POLITICS" 

Then  A.  C.  Townley  suggested  that  the  farmers  take  control 
of  the  state  machinery — they  being  the  majority  of  the  people 
of  the  State.  He  suggested  that  the  farmers  organize  them- 
selves into  a  league  without  political  partisanship,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  taking  control  of  the  state  machinery.  They  organized 
the  Nonpartisan  League  of  North  Dakota.  At  the  following 
election  the  league  cast  87,000  out  of  110,000  votes.  It  elected 
every  state  officer  except  one.  It  elected  a  majority  of  the 
Legislature.  The  farmers  of  North  Dakota  are  now  in  a  fair 
way  to  get  proper  marketing  facilities. 

The  injustice  in  marketing  farm  products  does  not  apply  to 
North  Dakota  only.  It  applies  to  every  State  in  the  Union.  In 
North  Dakota,  it  is  a  matter  of  wheat ;  in  Texas,  it  is  a  matter 
of  cotton.  In  each  of  these  States,  and  in  every  other  State, 
the  price  of  the  farmers'  products  is  fixed  by  the  buyers.  In 
no  State  is  the  farmers'  cost  considered.  It  is  the  buyer's  busi- 
ness to  buy  as  cheaply  as  he  can,  and  he  does  it.  The  problem 
for  the  producer  is  always  the  same. 

ORGANIZATION   IN   THIRTEEN   STATES 

The  producers  in  neighboring  States,  observing  what  North 
Dakota  has  done,  decided  to  do  the  same  thing.  They  asked 
Mr.  Townley  and  the  men  who  had  organized  the  Nonpartisan 
League  in  North  Dakota  to  organize  in  their  States.  So  the 
idea  spread.  The  Nonpartisan  League  of  North  Dakota  became 
the  National  Nonpartisan  League.  It  is  organized,  or  is  organ- 
izing, in  thirteen  States — Minnesota,  North  Dakota,  Wisconsin, 
South  Dakota,  Montana,  Idaho,  Washington,  Colorado,  Nebraska, 
Iowa,  Kansas,  Oklahoma,  Texas. 

The  method  of  organizing  the  league  is  to  send  men  from 
farmer  to  farmer,  who  explain  to  them  the  purpose  of  the 
league.  Before  the  farmer  joins  he  understands  its  whole  pur- 


560  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

pose.  When  he  understands  the  purpose  he  joins.  He  sees 
where  it  benefits  him.  This  comprehension  by  the  farmer  of  just 
what  the  organization  means  to  do  is  the  precise  reason  why 
the  political  opponents  of  the  league  can  have  no  influence  upon 
the  farmer  after  he  has  joined.  The  farmer  knows  what  he 
has  done,  and  he  knows  why  he  has  done  it.  He  is  fortified 
against  the  fallacious  arguments  of  partisan  politicians. 

PUBLIC    OWNERSHIP    THE    CORNERSTONE 

The  basis  of  the  league  idea  is  public  ownership.  Public 
ownership  of  public  necessities  will  mean  fair  marketing  facil- 
ities for  the  producer.  It  will  mean  fair  purchasing  facilities 
for  the  consumer.  The  purpose  of  a  man  handling  farm  prod- 
ucts on  their  way  from  the  field  to  the  table  is  to  make  money. 
The  products  are  handled  by  various  men  and  each  man  makes 
his  profit.  Some  of  these  men  are  entirely  unnecessary  to  proper 
distribution. 

The  league's  plan  is  for  the  public — the  State — to  build,  own 
and  control  the  facilities  for  carrying  products  of  the  farm  to 
the  city,  at  the  cost  of  carrying  it.  The  purpose  of  these  State- 
owned  facilities  will  be  to  store  and  transform  raw  food  into 
eatable  food,  at  the  cost  of  transformation.  Thus  the  great 
spread  between  the  price  the  producer  gets  and  the  price  the 
consumer  pays  wrill  be  reduced.  Undoubtedly  the  producer  of 
the  raw  food  will  get  more  for  his  product.  He  should  get 
more.  He  must  get  more.  He  must  get  enough  to  make  farming 
profitable,  or  he  must  quit  farming. 

Transforming  raw  food  into  eatable  food  at  cost,  eliminating 
all  useless  handling  and  useless  profits,  certainly  means  that 
the  eatable  food  reaches  the  consumer  at  a  lower  price  than  it 
now  reaches  him.  The  same  process,  .when  applied  to  the 
products  of  the  city  worker,  means  that  the  farmer  will  buy 
his  supplies  at  lower  prices  than  he  now  pays.  Neither  the 
city  worker  nor  the  farm  worker  will  have  to  pay  the  profit 
upon  profit  that  he  now  pays  for  so  many  useless  handlings. 
The  thing  is  perfectly  simple.  It  is  so  simple  that  the  political 
opponents  of  the  league  do  not  attack  it. 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         561 


Politicians,  of  course,  do  attack  the  National  Nonpartisan 
League.  They  see  that  the  league  is  about  to  take  control  of 
States  other  than  North  Dakota.  They  do  not  like  this.  They 
see  that  they  cannot  break  down  the  league's  principles.  They 
have  to  break  the  league  down  in  some  way,  however,  or  they 
will  cease  to  control.  So  they  attack  its  leaders.  They  call 
them  names.  They  say  they  are  "crooks"  and  "Socialists." 
They  have  even  charged  the  league  with  being  disloyal  to  the 
United  States  Government. 

The  charge  seems  to  have  been  founded  on  certain  thoughts 
expressed  last  spring  by  league  men  as  to  the  conduct  of  the 
war.  These  are  the  thoughts: 

Profiteering  should  be  eliminated. 

When  the  price  of  wheat  was  fixed  it  was  urged  that  the  price 
of  all  necessary  commodities  be  fixed  in  proportion. 

It  was  urged  that  a  definite  statement  of  war  aims  be  made, 
and  what  those  aims  should  be  was  suggested. 

It  was  urged  that  the  principles  of  man  conscription  be  applied 
to  wealth;  that  the  war  be  financed,  first,  from  the  pockets  of 
the  men  best  able  to  spare  the  money. 

REALLY    WITH    PRESIDENT    WILSON 

Now  observe: 

The  National  Government  is  doing  all  that  it  can  to  eliminate 
profiteering. 

It  is  also  urging  upon  Congress  that  prices  be  fixed  on  all 
necessary  commodities. 

The  President  has  stated  our  war  aims,  and  his  statement 
does  not  differ  materially  from  the  aims  suggested  by  the  league. 

Thus,  three  of  the  four  thoughts  for  which  league  men  have 
been  called  disloyal  are  also  the  thoughts  of  the  national  Admin- 
istration. The  fourth,  wealth  conscription,  has  been  urged  by 
many  prominent  men  who  have  not  been  called  disloyal.  The 
fact  is  that  in  the  matter  of  the  war  the  National  Nonpartisan 
League  stands  squarely  with  President  Wilson. 


562  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


THE   NORTH   DAKOTA   PROGRAM 

The  accomplishments  of  the  league  in  a  political  way  have  been 
the  capture  and  control  of  the  State  of  North  Dakota.  The 
main  program  of  the  league  for  North  Dakota — State-built  ele- 
vators and  flour  mills — has  not  yet  been  accomplished,  because 
at  the  last  election  twenty-four  State  Senators  were  not  up  for 
election.  At  the  legislative  session  these  twenty-four  hold-over 
Senators  succeeded  in  preventing  amendments  to  the  State 
constitution  that  would  have  permitted  the  State  to  build  ele- 
vators and  flour  mills  at  once.  These  twenty-four  hold-over 
Senators  will  be  up  for  election  in  November.  They  will  not 
hold  over.  At  the  same  election  the  necessary  amendments  to 
the  Constitution  will  be  initiated  by  the  people. 

Much  legislation,  however,  beneficial  to  the  State  was  enacted. 
Executive  acts  of  the  State  officers  have  been  of  even  more  benefit. 
Economic  accomplishments  have  resulted  entirely  from  political 
accomplishments. 

A  grain-grading  commission  has  been  formed. 

Rural  schools  have  been  standardized.  Rural  schools  have 
been  given  better  teachers.  They  are  having  better  attendance 
and  better  health. 

An  inheritance  tax  was  levied  on  large  fortunes. 

Votes  were  given  to  women. 

Money  was  appropriated  for  experiments  at  the  Agricultural 
College,  by  which  it  has  been  proven  that  low-grade  wheat  at 
70  cents  per  bushel  was  worth,  for  making  flour,  pound  for 
pound,  as  much  as  high  grades  selling  at  $1.70  per  bushel. 

New  taxation  classifications  were  adopted,  which  reduced  the 
rate  for  improvements  upon  farm  lands  and  passed  part  of 
the  burden  of  taxation  on  to  the  corporations  that  had  been 
dodging  taxation  since  the  beginning  of  time. 

A  dairy  commission  was  provided. 

A  license  system  for  creameries  was  established. 

Guarantee  of  bank  deposits  was  provided  for. 

A  welfare  commission  was  created. 

In  all,  thirty-two  remedial  steps  were  taken  for  the  benefit 
of  the  people  of  the  State.  Briefly,  it  is  estimated  that  each 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         563 

farmer  has  saved,  under  the-  present  State  management,  from 
$800  to  $1,000. 

THE   NATIONAL   PROGRAM 

The  National  Nonpartisan  League,  or  some  other  organization 
embodying  the  ideas  that  are  its  basis,  will  control  the  United 
States.  There  is  no  way  to  stop  it,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
people  cannot  be  prevented  from  thinking.  As  people  think 
they  see  the  justice  of  the  thing  and  what  it  means  to  them- 
selves. As  they  see  that,  they  adopt  it.  The  war  is  making 
people  think  faster  than  ever.  If  public  ownership  and  control 
is  good  for  a  nation  at  war,  it  is  good  for  a  nation  at  peace.  The 
people  see  that  public  ownership  of  public  necessities  is  an 
absolute  requirement  of  a  life  scheme  that  will  give  each  man 
a  chance  to  live  healthfully,  properly  to  educate  his  children, 
and  to  have  some  of  the  little  enjoyments  of  life. 

To  that  end  the  National  Nonpartisan  League  will  have  can- 
didates for  State  and  national  office  in  those  States  in  which 
organization  has  reached  the  point  where  the  members  want  to 
endorse  candidates.  Indications  seem  to  point  to  the  election 
of  from  fifteen  to  twenty  Congressmen  this  year. 

The  most  significant  indication  observed  at  the  office  of  the  Non- 
partisan  League  at  this  time  is  the  great  interest  in  the  movement 
shown  by  the  people  in  States  in  which  the  League  has  made  no 
effort  to  organize.  In  the  national  headquarters  hundreds  of  let- 
ters are  received  every  day  asking  for  information.  These  letters 
do  not  all  come  from  farmers.  The  fact  is  that  the  greater 
part  of  them  are  now  coming  from  industrial  centers.  The  in- 
dustrial worker  sees  that  the  league's  plan  for  providing  proper 
marketing  facilities  will  benefit  him  just  as  much  as  it  does  those 
who  produce  the  food. 

Experience  has  shown  that  little  benefit  for  the  common  people 
can  be  obtained  except  through  control  of  political  machinery. 
This  principle  applies  to  the  national  government  just  as  it  does 
to  State  government.  The  national  Congress  has  taken  more 
steps  for  the  protection  and  interests  of  business  enterprises 
than  it  has  for  the  protection  and  interests  of  the  majority  of 
the  people.  This  is  due  largely  to  the  fact  that  business  enter- 


564  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

prises  have  control  of  political  power.  The  men  who  have  been 
elected  have  felt  in  some  measure  that  they  owed  their  election 
to  business  enterprises.  A  man  naturally  will  respect  the  in- 
terests of  the  person  to  whom  he  owes,  his  position. 

The  National  Nonpartisan  League  is  now  composed  of  farm 
workers.  Industrial  workers  are  showing  an  intense  interest  in 
it.  These  workers  form  the  majority  of  the  people  of  the  United 
States.  The  political  coalition  of  these  workers  means  political 
power  for  them.  They  will  send  men  to  Washington  who  owe 
their  election  to  them.  These  office-holders  will  respond  to  the 
interests  of  those  who  sent  them  to  Washington.  The  result 
will  be  legislation  beneficial  to  the  majority  instead  of  to  the 
few.  It  cannot  be  otherwise.  That  is  the  broad  purpose  of  the 
National  Nonpartisan  League. 


II.  WHY  THE  LEAGUE  IS  OPPOSED 

W.    H.    HUNTER 

THE  cardinal  count  in  the  indictment  against  the  National 
Nonpartisan  League,  on  which  its  managers  and  promoters  are 
seeking  a  verdict  of  "not  guilty"  by  a  jury  of  the  public,  is  dis- 
loyal leadership. 

Political  leaders  of  the  League,  than  whom  the  country  has 
produced  no  shrewder  or  more  resourceful,  are  contending  that 
the  farmer  is  down-trodden  and  oppressed,  that  every  man's 
hand  is  against  him  and  that  for  his  own  salvation  his  hand 
must  be  against  every  man.  They  have  sought  to  embitter  the 
farmer  against  bankers,  grain-dealers,  elevator-operators  and 
millers  and  to  ally  the  laboring  men  of  the  cities  with  the  farmer 
by  the  contention  that  this  is  a  "rich  man's  war  and  a  poor 
man's  fight,"  that  while  the  farmers  and  laboring  men  are  bear- 
ing the  brunt  of  the  fighting,  the  manufacturers  and  business 
men  generally  are  piling  up  wealth,  through  munitions-making 
and  profiteering. 

It  is  ostensibly  to  protect  the  farmers  against  this  kind  of 
oppression  that  the  National  Nonpartisan  League  has  organized 
in  a  half-dozen  States  in  which  farmers  are  jn  the  majority,  and 
the  fallacy  of  the  contention  is  plain  on  the  face  of  it.  The 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         565 

farmers  are  in  a  healthy  majority  in  North  Dakota,  South 
Dakota,  Minnesota,  Nebraska,  Kansas,  Iowa,  Montana,  and  in 
every  State  in  which  the  League  is  active.  The  history  of  these 
States,  from  the  days  of  the  Ocala  platform  down  to  the  last 
election,  shows  that  the  farmers  have  never  failed  to  have  their 
rights  recognized  and  their  wrongs  redressed  by  legislative  action. 
They  are  and  have  always  been  in  the  majority  in  these  States, 
and  the  claims  of  the  League  leaders  to-day  assume  the  form  of  a 
plea  by  the  majority  to  be  protected  from  the  wiles  and  machina- 
tions of  a  wicked  minority. 

The  cuttlefish  when  attacked  sheds  ink  to  becloud  the  waters 
and  elude  pursuit.  The  League  leaders  are  playing  the  role 
of  political  cuttlefish  just  now  and  trying  to  becloud  the  polit- 
ical waters  by  claiming  that  the  wicked  interests  are  trying  to 
prevent  the  farmers  from  organizing.  There  is  not  and  has  not 
been  anywhere  in  Minnesota  or  the  Dakotas  the  slightest  oppo- 
sition to  farmers'  organizations.  The  opposition  to  the  Non- 
partisan  League,  an  opposition  that  in  Minnesota  is  assuming 
menacing  form,  is  caused,  not  by  the  organization  of  farmers, 
but  by  the  secret  or  open  disloyalty  of  leaders  of  the  League. 
The  line  is  being  closely  drawn  in  Minnesota  between  the  loy- 
alists and  the  disloyalists,  and  no  less  a  person  than  the  Governor 
of  the  State,  J.  A.  A.  Burnquist,  elected  by  farmers'  votes  and 
by  the  largest  majority  ever  given  a  Governor  of  the  State, 
has  openly  placed  the  leaders  of  the  National  Nonpartisan  League 
in  the  disloyal  class.  The  president  of  the  League  is  under 
indictment  in  two  Minnesota  counties  for  obstructing  the  draft. 
The  manager  of  the  League  has  been  convicted  of  a  like  offense, 
and  other  organizers  and  representatives  of  the  League  have  been 
charged  with  obstructing  the  draft. 

BUSINESS   INTERESTS   SCENT   SOCIALISM 

It  is  true  that  the  business  interests,  both  big  and  little,  of 
the  Northwest  are  opposed  to  the  Nonpartisan  League  and  fear 
it.  This  opposition  and  fear  are  based  on  the  League's  record 
in  North  Dakota,  where  only  the  existence  of  a  hold-over  State 
Senate,  not  elected  by  the  League,  prevented  North  Dakota 
from  going  "whole  hog"  into  the  experiment  of  a  Socialist  State 
government.  The  League  attempted  to  adopt  a  new  constitution 


566  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

for  North  Dakota  by  act  of  the  legislature,  instead  of  by  vote 
of  the  people.  It  proposed  to  remove  the  limit  of  indebtedness 
that  might  be  incurred  by  the  State  or  any  political  division 
thereof.  It  proposed  to  exempt  farm  improvements  from  tax- 
ation and  to  authorize  the  issue  of  currency  by  State  banks. 
It  proposed  State  ownership  of  flour  mills,  terminal  elevators, 
railroads,  packing  houses  and  to  allow  the  State  to  engage  in 
any  and  all  forms  of  business  and  industry.  It  proposed  that 
''three  bona  fide  farmers"  should  be  elected  to  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  State.  It  proposed  State  Socialism  on  a  scale 
never  before  attempted  in  this  country  and  never  attempted  any- 
where except  quite  recently  by  Lenine  and  Trotzky  in  Russia. 

Objection  has  been  offered,  also,  by  the  business  interests 
against  the  plan  of  a  chain  of  cooperative  stores  and  banks, 
proposed  by  the  League  leaders  and  for  which  more  than 
$1,000,000  have  been  subscribed  by  the  farmers  who  have 
no  voice  in  the  control  of  these  enterprises,  no  share  of  dividends 
and  no  control  of  funds,  but  who  have  the  privilege  of  trading 
at  such  stores  "at  cost,  plus  10  per  cent./'  for  cash.  The 
League  is  opposed  also  because  its  leaders  are  avowed  Socialists 
and  in  favor  of  applying  the  most  radical  Socialistic  theories 
to  the  government  of  the  States  in  which  they  secure  control. 

SOME   OF   THE   DEMANDS   REASONABLE 

But  these  questions  can  be  fought  out  in  peace  times,  just 
as  the  fallacies  of  the  Farmers'  Alliance  and  the  Populist  party 
were  rejected  and  the  meritorious  measures  adopted  by  the 
legislatures  of  those  days.  No  one  contends  that  all  of  the 
claims  of  the  Nonpartisan  League  are  unjustified.  Some  of 
them  are  just  and  must  be  recognized  by  legislative  action.  The 
difficulty  with  the  farmer  to-day  is  that,  because  of  the  abolition 
of  party  lines  through  the  nonpartisan  primary  laws,  in  force 
throughout  the  Northwest,  he  feels  the  lack  of  leadership,  the 
need  of  organization  through  which  to  make  his  appeals  and 
demands  for  legislative  action.  With  every  politician  for  him- 
self, no  responsibility  anywhere,  the  farmer,  who  is  naturally 
a  conservative,  is  forced  to  turn  to  radical  leaders  who  want  to 
lead  him  into  the  mire  of  Socialism. 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         567 


Keep  this  honest  farmer  in  mind;  see  into  what  company  he 
is  drawn  when  he  rallies  to  the  standard  of  the  National  Non- 
partisan  League.  Hundreds  of  meetings  called  by  that  organ- 
ization in  Minnesota  have  been  suppressed  and  the  organiza- 
tion has  been  barred  from  holding  meetings  in  many  counties 
because  the  sheriffs  and  loyal  citizens  have  become  convinced 
that  such  meetings,  if  permitted,  would  end  in  riot  and  blood- 
shed. This  is  not  at  the  dictation  of  "Big  Business."  These 
meetings  have  been  banned  by  the  sheriffs  and  other  peace  officers 
elected  by  the  votes  of  farmers,  by  men  who  know  their  neigh- 
bors and  know  where  they  stand  on  war  questions.  The  meet- 
ings have  been  banned  because  whenever  one  has  been  permitted, 
it  has  served  as  a  rallying  center  for  professional  pacifists,  every 
pro-German  for  miles  around,  for  I.  W.  W.  preachers  of  sabotage 
and  for  Socialist  spell-binders  openly  opposing  the  draft.  These 
same  Socialists,  who  have  been  active  in  helping  the  League 
leaders,  have  nominated  for  Governor  of  Minnesota  a  man  who 
has  been  convicted  for  obstructing  the  draft  and  a  candidate 
for  State  Senator  who  is  under  conviction  for  seditious  utter- 
ances, and  they  were  nominated  on  a  platform  which  demanded 
the  repeal  of  the  draft  act,  endorsed  the  Russian  Bolsheviki,  ex- 
pressed sympathy  and  support  for  the  I.  W.  W.  leaders  under 
indictment  at  Chicago,  and  demanded  the  immediate  withdrawal 
of  our  forces  from  France. 


F.    COMMUNITY  ORGANIZATION 
HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  A  COMMUNITY 

E.   L.    MORGAN 

IT  is  impossible  to  set  up  any  one  particular  way  of  organizing 
a  community  and  expect  it  to  work  in  every  detail  in  all  parts 
of  the  state.  The  thing  needed  is  for  the  town  to  get  clearly 

i  Adapted  from  '-Mobilizing  the  Rural  Community,"  The  Massachusetts 
Agricultural  College,  Extension  Service,  Extension  Bulletin  No.  23,  Am- 
Jierst,  Sept.,  1*18. 


568  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

in  mind  the  idea  that  the  most  efficient  method  must  be  used, 
and,  owing  to  varying  local  conditions,  each  community  has 
its  own  starting  point  at  which  the  beginning  must  be  made,  that 
it  is  only  through  cooperation  and  united  action  that  agriculture 
and  community  life  are  going  to  be  developed  and  that  the  goal 
to  be  attained  is  the  community  united  and  working  together  in 
the  carrying  out  of  a  definite,  practical,  long-term  plan  of  de- 
velopment along  those  lines  of  greater  interest. 

The  most  successful  communities  have  found  the  following 
principles  to  be  indispensable  in  their  development : 

1.  In  any  redirection  of  rural  interests  the  community  is  the 
natural  unit  of  activity. 

2.  The  progress  of  the  rural  community  represents  one  prob- 
lem and  one  only.     This  problem  has  a  number  of  phases  but 
they  are  all  parts  of  the  whole  and  must  be  dealt  with  as  such  if 
substantial  progress  is  to  be  made. 

3.  Improvement  plans  must  be  based  on  actual  farm  and  vil- 
lage conditions.     They  must  be  based  on  facts — guessing  must  be 
eliminated. 

4.  Those  things  by  which  the  people  live  must  be  adequately 
organized  if  substantial  community  progress  is  to  be  brought 
about.     These  are  usually  expressed  through  local  organizations, 
unorganized  group  interests,  or  both.     This  does  not  mean  that 
something  new  must  be  organized.     It  means  that  the  various 
elements  of  the  community  must  get  into  the  best  possible  work- 
ing relation  to  each  other  so  they  will  become  an  harmonious 
working  unit — the  team  work  idea. 

There  are  three  forms  which  have  been  used  in  this  State,  each 
one  applying  to  different  conditions.  The  first  two  are  thought 
of  as  stepping  stones  toward  the  third. 

1.  The  Local  Leader.  There  are  many  towns  in  which  there 
is  very  little  interest  in  matters  of  progress.  In  these  cases 
about  the  only  possibility  lies  in  the  efforts  of  a  few  local  leaders 
to  awaken  general  interest  by  bringing  about  some  special  events 
which  will  be  sufficiently  interesting  to  create  a  desire  for  some- 
thing of  a  more  permanent  nature.  In  some  towns  a  teacher, 
minister,  farmer,  or  doctor  has  been  the  local  leader  and  by 
working  through  the  school,  church,  grange,  or  farmers'  club  has 
produced  valuable  results.  Some  of  these  results  have  been : 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         569 

A  farmers'  institute. 

A  community  day. 

Pure-bred  livestock  improvement. 

Community  celebrations — Christmas,  July  4th,  Thanksgiving. 

Plays  and  pageants. 

A  public  forum. 

A  town  agricultural  fair  and  exhibit. 

The  keeping  of  farm  accounts. 

Home  and  public  grounds  improvement  contest. 

The  Group  Plan.  'In  every  town  there  are  people  whose  in- 
terests are  the  same  and  who  can  work  together  for  particular 
improvements  with  the  community  idea  in  mind  before  it  is 
possible  to  get  the  town  as  a  whole  together  on  a  larger  and  more 
thorough  development  plan.  This  is  called  the  group  plan  of 
work.  It  differs  from  the  first  in  that  it  is  not  usually  done 
through  existing  organizations  but  often  results  in  the  form- 
ing of  a  new  organization  for  some  specific  purpose.  Like  the 
first  plan,  it  should  be  thought  of  as  a  step  toward  the  larger 
and  more  complete  community  development.  Some  things  that 
have  been  done  under  this  plan  are: 

Formation  of  a  farmers'  cooperative  exchange  for  buying  and 
selling.  The  third  year  business  amounted  to  $21,000. 

Organization  of  a  home  makers'  club  directed  by  the  women's 
section  of  the  farm  bureau. 

Starting  of  a  cow  test  association. 

Organization  of  a  cooperative  creamery. 

Formation  of  a  local  breeders'  association. 

3.  The  Community  Council.  As  has  been  stated,  the  two 
plans  just  mentioned  should  not  be  thought  of  as  the  end.  They 
are  good,  in  and  of  themselves,  and  well  worth  doing,  but  let 
us  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  the  work  to  be  done  requires 
an  all-around  community  development.  It  may  be  necessary  to 
do  these  specific  pieces  of  work  but  let  us  think  of  them  as  a  part 
of  the  preparation  for  a  complete  organization  of  the  community. 
We  believe  the  following  to  be  the  more  complete  plan.  It  is 
the  result  of  several  years'  trial  in  this  state  and  has  been  an 
evolution  born  of  the  experience  of  common  folks.  It  will 


570  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

always  need  to  be  adapted  to  local  conditions  but  the  principles 
are  the  same.     The  steps  usually  taken  are : 

1.  CONFERENCE  OF  A  FEW.     Some  local  leader  should  call  to- 
gether one  representative  from  each  local  organization  or  group 
and  a  few  at  large  to  consider:     (a)   The  possibilities  of  and 
benefits  to  be  derived  from  a  general  get-together  for  definite 
planning  of  the  future  of  the  community,     (b)  Whether  the 
town  cares  to  put  in  the  necessary  time,  money  and  brains  to 
produce  results  or  whether  it  prefers  to  let  '  *  well  enough ' '  alone 
and  let  the  future  take  care  of  itself.     At. this  time  it  is  best  to 
have  some  one  present  from  the  Farm  Bureau  or  Agricultural'1 
College  to  tell  of  the  success  of  other  towns  and  make  clear  the 
necessary  steps. 

2.  ORGANIZATION     REPRESENTATIVES.     These     representatives 
should  report  to  their  respective  organizations,  each  of  which 
should  appoint  one  permanent  representative  to  become  a  part 
of   the   joint    committee    or    council    of    organizations.     There 
should  also  be  chosen  three  or  more  members  at  large.     This 
council  is  not  another  organization.     It  is  merely  the  coordina- 
tion of  all  local  interests  for  united  action. 

3.  THE  FIRST  WORK.     There  are  three  specific  things  which  a 
community  council  should  do  at  first : 

a.  Bring  about  a  thorough  understanding  among  the  various 

local  organizations  as  to  just  what  each  is  doing,  viz. : 
Get  a  statement  of  the  present  purpose  of  each  organization. 
Exchange  plans  of  work  for  the  next  six  months. 
Work  out  a  calendar  of  gatherings  of  every  sort  for  the 

next  six  months.     Arrange  these  chronologically  so  that 

conflicts  may  be  avoided. 

b.  Take  up  any  specific  items  of  community  interest  which 

should  receive  immediate  attention. 

Consider  special  problems  in  agriculture  or  community  life 
that  need  to  be  met  at  once. 

Develop  plans  for  community  celebrations  such  as:  Christ- 
mas, July  4th,  Labor  Day,  Thanksgiving,  etc.  Plans  to 
to  be  carried  out  by  local  organizations,  not  by  the 
council. 

c.  Call  in  representatives  of  county  organizations  and  ascer- 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         571 

tain  what  work  they  are  prepared  to  cooperate  in  for 

your  town.     These  should  include: 
District  Officer  of  the  State  Department  of  Health. 
The  Farm-Bureau  or  Improvement  League. 
Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children. 
County  Young  Men's  Christian  Association. 
County  Nursing  Association. 
The  Boy  Scouts  and  others. 

4.  THE  FIRST  COMMUNITY  MEETING.    Plenty  of  time  should 
be  allowed  to  insure  a  perfect  understanding  among  the  local 
organizations.     Sometimes  this  takes  a  year,  but  it  is  time  well 
spent.     After  the  items  mentioned  in  (3)  have  been  achieved  the 
council  should  begin  to  consider  the  larger  planning  for  the 
community.     Call  a  community  meeting  to  consider  the  ques- 
tions mentioned  under  (1)  and  these  only. 

A  chairman  and  secretary  should  be  elected  and  all  mention 
of  specific  items  of  improvement  avoided  at  this  time,  as  it  may 
often  reopen  old  issues  and  arouse  antagonism  just  at  the  time 
when  the  greatest  harmony  is  needed.  It  will  be  found  worth 
while  to  have  some  one  present  from  a  town  that  has  made  a 
success  of  community  organization.  The  whole  matter  should 
be  thoroughly  discussed  from  all  possible  angles  and  a  vote  taken 
to  determine  whether  the  people  really  desire  to  go  ahead. 

5.  COMMITTEES.     If   action    is    favorable,    a   few    committees 
should  be  appointed.     It  is  better  to  have  a  few  general  com- 
mittees with  sub-committees.     The  following  have  been  found 
sufficient  for  all  practical  purposes: — 

a.  FARM  PRODUCTION — soil,  crops,  animals. 

b.  FARM  BUSINESS — farm  supplies,  sale  of  products,  credit, 

farm  records  and  accounts,  surveys. 

In  some  communities  it  is  advisable  to  combine  the  com- 
mittees on  farm  production  and  farm  business  into  one 
committee  on  agriculture. 

c.  CONSERVATION — purchase  and  use  of  food,  canning,  drying 

and  storing,   fuel  supply,  natural  resources,   points  of 
scenic  and  historical  value. 

d.  BOYS'  AND  GIRLS'  INTERESTS — schools,  educational  clubs, 

social  clubs,  moral  training,  plays  and  games. 


572  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

e.  COMMUNITY  LIFE — the  home,  education,  health,  transporta- 
tation,  recreation,  civic  improvement,  public  morality. 

These  committees  should  be  asked  to  do  three  things:  (a) 
Study  the  town  thoroughly  along  their  respective  lines,  (b) 
Call  in  whatever  help  can  be  secured  from  state  and  county 
organizations,  boards  and  institutions,  (c)  Work  out  two  or 
three  practical  projects  for  improvement  which  will  be  submitted 
to  the  second  mass  meeting.  These  projects  should  be  based  on 
actual  needs. 

6.  THE  SECOND  COMMUNITY  MEETING.     This  should  be  merely 
an  unofficial  town  meeting.     The   chairman  of  the  first   mass 
meeting  should  preside.     The  committee  chairman  should  report 
their  projects  which  should  be  taken  up  separately  and  put  to 
a  vote  just  like  an  article  in  the  town  warrant.     While  there 
will  be  nothing  official  or  binding  in  this  vote,  still  it  will  give 
sufficient  attention  to  each  project  to  prevent  worthless  ones 
being  passed.     Here  again  everybody  should  have  his  say,  for  it 
is  better  for  opposition  to  appear  now  than  later.     Do  not  forget 
that  a  community  will  go  no  farther  nor  faster  in  its  develop- 
ment than  the  majority  of  the  people  both  see  and  believe. 

7.  THE  COMMUNITY  PLAN  OR  PROGRAM.     Such  projects  as  are 
adopted  become  the  community's  working  program.     It  should 
comprise  some  projects  which  can  be  carried  out  at  once  and 
others   which   will   require    a   period   of   years.     The   projects 
adopted  are  turned  over  to  the  community  council,  which  acts 
as  their  custodian  and  directs  their  carrying  out. 

8.  GETTING  RESULTS.     The  local  organizations  carry  out  the 
specific  projects.     As  their  representatives  come  together  in  the 
council  they  either  choose  or  by  general  consent  are  asked  to 
become  responsible  for  definite  things.     They  do  this  knowing 
that  they  will  have  the  sympathy  and  support  of  other  organi- 
zations and  also  that  they  will  be  expected  to  produce  results. 
If  there  are  projects  which  no  organization  can  carry  on,  such 
as  cooperative  buying  and  selling,  it  may  be  necessary  to  organize 
a  new  group  to  do  this  work. 

9.  COUNCIL  MEETINGS.     The   council   should   meet   regularly 
every  three  months,  with  special  meetings  as  necessity  requires. 
These  meetings  should  be  real  conferences  on  the  most  important 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         573 

community  matters.  Reports  should  be  made  of  work  done  by 
the  various  organizations,  concerning  the  projects  adopted  and 
carried  out  by  them.  The  remaining  projects  should  be  gone 
over  to  ascertain  whether  any  of  them  can  be  begun  during  the 
coming  three  months.  Other  matters  than  the  specific  projects 
often  come  up  at  this  time  and  receive  consideration. 

10.  THE  ANNUAL  COMMUNITY  MEETING.  Instead  of  one  of 
the  quarterly  meetings  of  the  council  there  should  be  a  meeting 
of  the  entire  community.  This  should  take  the  form  of  an 
annual  meeting.  Three  things  should  be  done: 

1.  Reports  should  be  made  of  work  done  by  any  organization 

or  group  during  the  past  year. 

2.  The  council  committees  should  report  the  working  plans  for 

the  coming  year. 

3.  The  chairman,  secretary  and  committees  for  the  ensuing 

year  should  be  chosen. 

In  addition  to  these  matters  of  business  there  is  usually  a 
speaker  from  the  outside  who  discusses  some  question  of  special 
interest  to  the  community  at  that  particular  time.  Special 
community  meetings  should  be  called  as  often  as  there  are  vital 
questions  to  be  considered  by  the  community. 

MODEL  AGREEMENT  FOR  A  COMMUNITY  COUNCIL 

ARTICLE  I 
Name  and  Object 

There  is  hereby  created  the Community  Council  to 

serve  as  a  medium  through  which  the  organizations  of 

(town)  can  cooperate  more  fully  in  their  work  for  community  progress. 

ABTICLE  II 

Membership 

Membership  shall  consist  of  one  representative  from  each  general  organiza- 
tion or  group  of  the  community  and  three  (five  to  seven  in  large  towns) 
selected  at  large.  Those  selected  by  organizations  or  groups  shall  be 
from  their  own  membership  and  shall  be  chosen  as  soon  as  possible  after 
October  1st  of  each  year. 

ABTICLE  III 

Officers 

The  officers  shall  comprise  chairman  and  secretary  who  shall  be  chosen  at 
the  annual  community  meeting. 


574  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

ARTICLE  IV 

Meetings 

The  council  shall  meet  every  three  months,  viz. :  The  first  Monday  eve- 
ning in  March,  June,  September,  and  December.  Meetings  of  special 
groups  of  citizens  may  be  called  when  necessary  to  carry  out  special  lines 
of  work.  Special  meetings  may  be  called  by  the  chairman  or  by  any  five 
members. 

ARTICLE  V 

Annual  Community  Meeting 

The  council  shall  arrange  for  an  annual  community  meeting  to  be  held  on 
or  near  the  first  Monday  of  December,  at  which  time  reports  shall  be  made 
on  the  progress  of  the  town.  At  this  time  projects  for  the  ensuing  year 
shall  be  presented  and  voted  upon.  Such  projects  as  are  adopted  shall 
become  a  part  of  the  working  program. 

ARTICLE  VI 

Amendments 
This  agreement  may  be  altered  or  amended  by  a  two-thirds  vote  of  the 

residents  of  the  town  of present  at  the  annual 

community  meeting. 

WHAT    MAY    BE    GAINED    THROUGH    COMMUNITY    ORGANIZATION 

1.  It  gives  purpose  to  the  energies  of  the  community. 

2.  It  secures  the  best  available  advice  at  all  points. 

3.  Guessing  is  eliminated  since  projects  for  improvement  are 
based  on  facts. 

4.  The  progress  of  the  community  is  put  on  a  practical,  busi- 
ness-like basis. 

5.  One-sided  development  is  avoided. 

6.  It  gives  the  best  possible  working  plan  for  the  develop- 
ment of  the  community. 

7.  The  development  of  community  spirit,  pride  and  purpose  i^ 
fostered.     Self-interest  gives  place  to  community  interest. 

8.  When  this  community  of  interest  is  developed,  it  causes 
many  forms  of  local  cooperation  to  follow  naturally. 

9.  It  gives  the  advantage  of  using  a  tried  method  that  is  work 
ing  successfully  in  many  towns.     It  is  no  longer  an  experiment 

10.  The  community  is  connected  with  the  sources  of  continu 
ous  help — The  Farm-Bureau,  Agricultural   College,   State  De 
partment  of  Health,  State  Board  of  Agriculture,  State  Board  oJ 
Education,  Massachusetts  Civic  League,  Society  for  the  Preven 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         575 

tion  of  Cruelty  to  Children,  County  Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  many 
others. 

11.  It  insures  future  welfare.  Community  organization 
means  to  the  community  what  scientific  management  means  to 
business.  The  community  improves  by  methods  similar  to  those 
of  a  careful  business  manager: — long-term  planning,  constant 
watchfulness,  striving  toward  perfection  in  all  departments  and 
a  thorough  coordination  of  them  all. 

SOME  THINGS   TO   REMEMBER 

1.  Get  the  community  planning  idea,  talk  it,  work  it. 

2.  Take  the  long  look  ahead  into  all  community  affairs. 

3.  Get  everybody  out  for  the  first  mass  meeting.     You  can't 
convince  people  who  are  not  present. 

4.  The  community  council  is  not  a  new  organization  but  just  a 
form  of  get-together  of  local  forces. 

5.  Don't    get    discouraged.     It    takes    time    to    bring    about 
maximum  efficiency. 

6.  Study  your  town.    Make  plans  meet  actual  needs.     Call  in 
outside  help. 

7.  Plan  some  project  in  each  line  of  improvement  such  as 
agriculture,  education,  the  home,  health,  etc. 

8.  If  one  organization  becomes  responsible  for  a  project,  back 
it  up  and  help  to  carry  it  out  successfully. 

9.  Committees  are  not  to  do  things  but  to  work  out  projects 
to  be  carried  out  by  the  organizations. 

10.  Your  community  has  its  own  place  to  begin.     Be  careful 
how  you  start.     It  is  better  to  do  one  or  two  things  well  than  to 
undertake  too  much. 

11.  Get   the   best   possible   advice   in   working   out    projects. 
Help  can  always  be  secured  from  your  Farm-Bureau  and  your 
Agricultural  College. 

12.  Be  sure  of  the  success  of  the  first  project  attempted.     Do 
not  let  it  fail,  for  upon  its  success  may  depend  the  continued 
interest  of  the  community. 

13.  Community  organization  is  not  "just  some  new-fangled 
notion."     It  is  merely  the  most  efficient  way  of  doing  things. 
It   has   stood   the    test   of   time    in    this   state.     It    has   made 
good. 


576  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

14.  The  council  should  meet  once  in  three  months  and  plan 
the  carrying  out  of  projects. 

15.  Don't  get  the  "town  boosting"  idea.     This  is  a  clean-cut 
'business  proposition  and  it  needs  careful  planning.     This  will 
take  time. 


DEFINITION  OF  A  RURAL  COMMUNITY1 

C.   W.   THOMPSON 

A  RURAL  community  may  be  defined  as  a  localized  group  of 
individuals  having  certain  common  interests,  purposes  and  ac- 
tivities, with  the  dominant  economic  interests  in  agriculture. 
Before  the  people  in  a  rural  locality  can  be  regarded  as  a  com- 
munity they  must  be  conscious  of  some  common  interests.  They 
must  also  be  led  on  by  those  interests  to  certain  common  pur- 
poses, expressed  in  common  action. 

A  rural  community,  like  an  individual,  may  be  very  mucli 
alive  or  it  may  not  be  alive  at  all.  The  measure  of  the  life 
of  a  community  may  be  found  in  the  number  of  interactions 
between  the  community  as  such,  and  its  own  members  or  the  out- 
side world. 

A  rural  community  may  be  static,  with  interests,  purposes 
and  activities,  which  do  not  change.  For  such  a  community 
the  main  problem  is  one  of  adaptation  to  fixed  conditions.  Or 
the  other  hand,  a  rural  community  may  be  dynamic  or  progres 
sive  in  its  interests,  purposes,  and  activities,  enlarging  its  lift 
in  the  light  of  new  experience. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

FARMERS'  ORGANIZATIONS 

Atkeson,  T.  C.     Semi-Centennial  History  of  the  Patrons  of  Husbandry 

Judd,  New  York,  1916. 
Barrett,    C.    S.     The   Mission,    History   and    Times   of   the   Farmers 

Union,  Marshall  and  Bruce,  Nashville,  Tenn.,  1909. 
Boyle,   James  E.     The  Agrarian   Movement  in  the   Northwest.    Air 

Econ.  Rev.,  8:505-521,  Sept.,  1918. 

i  From  an  unpublished  address  given  before  the  Graduate  School  o 
Agriculture,  Amherst,  Mass.,  1916. 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         577 

Buck,  S.  J.     The  Granger  Movement.     Hajvard,  Cambridge,  1913. 

Butterfield,  K.  L.     The  Grange.     Forum,  31 : 231-242,  April,  1901. 

Carney,  Mabel.  The  Grange  and  Other  Farmers'  Organizations. 
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1912. 

Commons,  John  R.,  and  Andrews,  John  B.  Documentary  History  of 
American  Industrial  Society,  Volumes  9,  10,  Clark,  Cleveland, 
1910  and  1011. 

Coulter,  J.  L.  Organization  Among  Farmers  of  the  United  States. 
Yale  Review,  18 :  273-298. 

Drew,  F.  M.  Present  Farmers'  Movement.  Political  Science  Quar- 
terly, 6 :  282-310,  June,  1891. 

Dunning,  W.  A.  Farmers'  Alliance  History.  Alliance  Publishing  Co., 
Washington,  1891. 

Everett;  J.  A.  The  Third  Power.  J.  A.  Everett,  Pub.,  Indianapolis, 
Ind.,  1907. 

Farmers'  National  Congress  of  U.  S.     Official  Reports  of  Proceedings. 

Gaston,  Herbert.  The  Nonpartisan  League.  Harcourt,  Brase  and 
Howe,  N.  Y.,  1920. 

Gillette,  J.  M.  Constructive  Rural  Sociology.  Sturgis,  New  York, 
1915. 

Gladden,  Washington.  The  Embattled  Fanners.  Forum,  10 :  315-322, 
November,  1890. 

Holman,  Chas.  W.  First  Aid  to  the  Farming  Business.  Marketing 
and  Farm  Credits,  4th  Nat'l  Conf.,  Dec.,  1916,  pp.  477-91. 

Kelley,  0.  H.  The  Patrons  of  Husbandry.  Wagenseller,  Philadel- 
phia, 1875. 

Marsh,  B.  C.  The  State  Grange  a  Social  Force.  Survey,  23:703-4, 
February  12,  1910. 

Martin,  E.  W.  History  of  the  Grange  Movement.  National  Pub- 
lishing Co.,  Philadelphia,  1875. 

McVey,  F.  L.  The  Populist  Movement.  American  Economic  Asso- 
ciation, Economic  Studies,  1:131-209,  August,  1896. 

Morgan,  J.  T.  The  Danger  of  the  Farmers'  Alliance.  Forum,  12: 
399-409,  November,  1801. 

Nash,  J.  C.  Building  a  Farmers'  Monopoly.  World  Today,  13 :  717- 
20,  1907. 

National  Agricultural  Organization  Society.     Proceedings. 

Pett'er,  W.  A.  The  Farmers'  Defensive  Movement.  Forum,  8 : 463- 
473,  December,  1889. 

Pickett,  J.  E.  Prairie  Fire.  Country  Gentleman,  May  18  and  25, 
June  8,  15  and  22,  1918. 

Pierson,  C.  W.     The  Rise  of  the  Granger  Movement.     Popular  Science 

Monthly,  32 : 199-208,  December,  1887. 

The  Outcome  of  the  Granger  Movement.     Popular  Science  Monthly, 
32 :  368-373,  January,  1888. 

Russell,  C.  E.  The  Fanners'  Non-Partisan  League.  American  So- 
ciological Society  Publications,  11 :  31-36,  1916. 

Tubbs,  M.  W.  American  Society  of  Equity,  Its  Past,  Present  and  Fu- 
ture. Wis.  Equity  News,  June  25,  1912,  pp.  1-3,  Madison,  Wis. 


578  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


COMMUNITY  ORGANIZATION 

Burr,  W.  Community  Welfare  in  Kansas.  The  Kansas  State  Agri- 
cultural College  Extension  Bulletin  No.  4,  October,  1915. 

Butterfield,  K.  L.  Chapters  in  Rural  Progress.  Univ.  of  Chicago  Press, 
1909,  Chap.  IX. 

Carver,  T.  N.  The  Organization  of  a  Rural  Community.  U.  S.  De- 
partment of  Agriculture  Yearbook,  1914. 

Civic  Cooperation  in  Community  Building.  Bulletin  of  the  University 
of  Georgia.  Number  9,  Vol.  XVI.  Serial  Number  262,  Athens, 
June,  1916. 

Collier,  John.  Communitv  Councils.  Conf.  of  Social  Work,  1919, 
pp.  476-479. 

Eldridge,  S.     Problems  of  Community  Life.     Crowell,  New  York,  1915. 

Fiske,  F.  W.  The  Challenge  of  the  Country.  Chap.  3,  5.  Assoc. 
Press,  N.  Y.,  1912. 

Feagin,  Wm.  F.  Community  Organization.  Alabama's  Fundamental 
Need.  Pamphlet  published  by  State  Superintendent  of  Schools. 
January  5,  1914.  Department  of  Education,  Montgomery,  Ala- 
bama. 

Hanifan,  L.  J.  A  handbook  containing  suggestions  and  programs  for 
community  social  gatherings  at  rural  school  houses.  Published  in 
1916  by  State  Superintendent.  Charleston,  W.  Va. 

Hart,  J.  K.  Educational  Resources  of  Village  and  Rural  Communities. 
Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1913. 

Henderson,  C.  R.  Social  Duties  in  Rural  Communities.  In  his  So- 
cial Duties  from  the  Christian  Point  of  View.  Pp.  115-137,  Univ. 
of  Chicago  Press. 

Levin,  Nathan  R.,  and  Kammerling,  Edith.  Community  Centers — se- 
lective list  of  references  in  the  Chicago  Public  Library.  Pre- 
pared for  National  Community  Center  Conference.  Chicago, 
April  17-21,  1917. 

McVey,  Frank  L.  The  Making  of  a  Town.  A.  C.  McClurg  &  Co., 
Chicago,  1913. 

Morgan,  E.  L.  Community  Rebuilding,  How  It  Can  Be  Done.  Our 
Wonder  World,  Volume  10.  Sherman,  Boston. 

Phelan,  R.  V.  Community  Centers.  University  of  Minnesota,  St. 
Paul.,  Extension  Division. 

Smith,  W.  H.  Organizing  a  Country  Community.  American  City, 
Town  and  County,  11 :  211,  Sept.,  1914. 

Ward,  Edward  J.  The  Community  Secretary.  Education  Vol.  36: 
666-669.  No.  10,  June,  1916. 

Watrous,  Richard  B.  Civic  Art  and  Country  Life.  Annals  Vol.,  40: 
191-200,  March,  1912. 

Waugh,  F.  A.     Rural  Improvement.     Judd,  N.  Y.,  1914. 

Wilson,  A.  D.  Cooperation  and  Community  Spirit.  Pub.  Am.  Socio- 
logical Soc.,  11 : 113-125,  1916. 

RURAL  ORGANIZATION 
Adams,    Thomas.     Rural    Planning    and    Development.     A    Study    of 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RURAL  INTERESTS         579 

Rural  Conditions  and  Problems  in  Canada.  Commission  of  Con- 
servation, Canada,  Ottawa,  1917. 

Bird,  Chas.  S.  Town  Planning  for  Small  Communities.  Appleton, 
N.  Y.,  1917. 

Burr,  Walter.  Community  Welfare  in  Kansas.  Kansas  State  Agric. 
College,  Extension  Bulletin  No.  4,  Manhattan,  October,  1915. 

Butterfield,  K.  L.  The  Farmer  and  the  New  Day.  Macmillan,  N.  Y., 
1919. 

Carver,  T.  N.  The  Organization  of  a  Rural  Community.  U.  S.  Dept. 
Agriculture  Yearbook  1914,  89-138. 

Community  Service  Week  in  North  Carolina.  Issued  from  the  Office 
of  the  Superintendent  of  Public  Instruction,  Raleigh,  N.  C.,  1914. 

County  and  Community  Fairs.  Oregon  Agricultural  College,  Extension 
Series  II,  No.  45,  Corvallis,  1909. 

Farrington,  Frank.  Community  Development.  Ronald  Press,  N.  Y., 
1915. 

Frame,  Nat  T.  Focusing  on  the  Country  Community.  College  of 
Agi^culture,  Circular  211,  Morgantown,  July,  1918. 

Galpin,  C.  J.  The  Social  Anatomy  of  an  Agricultural  Community. 
Research  Bulletin  34,  Agricultural  Experiment  Station,  Univ.  of 
Wisconsin,  Madison,  1915. 

Hieronymus,  R.  E.  The  Community  Adviser  and  Rural  Communi- 
ties. Conference  Social  Work,  1918,  pp.  480-1. 

Israel,  Heniy.  Unifying  Rural  Community  Interests.  Association 
Press,  N.  Y.,  1914. 

Jefferson,  Lorian  P.  The  Community  Market.  Massachusetts  Agri- 
cultural College,  Extension  Bulletin  No.  21,  Amherst,  April,  1918. 

Lloyd,  W.  A.  Status  and  Results  of  County  Agent  Work  in  the 
Northern  and  Western  States,  1917-18.  U.  S.  D.  A.,  State  Re- 
lation Service,  Cir.  No.  16,  S.  R.  S.  Doc.  88,  Government  Printing 
Office,  Washington. 

Office  of  Markets  and  Rural  Organization.  U.  S.  Dept.  of  Agricul- 
ture, Document — Markets  1,  Nov.  27,  1915. 

McClenahan,  Bessie  A.  County  Organization  of  Welfare  Agencies. 
Conference  Social  Work  1918,  pp.  595-604,  315  Plymouth  Court, 
Chicago. 

McVey,  Frank  L.     The  Making  of  a  Town.     McClurg,  Chicago,  1913. 

Mead,  Elwood.  Reform  in  Land  Settlement  Methods.  Conference 
Social  Work,  1918,  pp.  492-5. 

Miles,  R.  E.  Organization  of  Social  Forces  of  the  State.  Confer- 
ence Social  Work,  1918,  pp.  626-631. 

Morgan,  E.  L.  Mobilizing  the  Rural  Community.  Massachusetts  Agri- 
cultural College,  Extension  Bulletin  No.  23,  Amherst,  Sept.  1918. 

Morgan,  E.  L.  The  Community  Fair.  Massachusetts  Agricultural 
College,  Extension  Bulletin  No.  27,  Amherst,  May,  1919. 

Morman,  James  B.  The  Place  of  Agriculture  in  Reconstruction. 
Dutton,  N.  Y.,  1919. 

Moran,  J.  Sterling.  The  Community  Fair.  U.  S.  Dept.  of  Agricul- 
ture, Farmers'  Bulletin  870,  December,  1917. 

Negro  Rural  School  and  its  Relation  to  the  Community.  Extension 
Department,  Tuskegee  Normal  and  Industrial  Institute,  Tuskegee, 
Ala.,  1915. 


580  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Peabody  School  of  Education.  Civic  Cooperation  in  Community 
Building.  Bulletin  of  the  Univ.  of  Georgia,  Vol.  XVI,  No.  9,  June, 
1916. 

Pratt,  Edwin  A.  The  Organization  of  Agriculture.  Button,  N.  Y., 
1904. 

Shepherd,  Robert  P.  Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency.  Abing- 
don,  Chicago,  1916. 

Sleeper,  H.  D.  Mrs.  Community  Effort  with  Rural  Social  Problems. 
Mass.  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children,  Protec- 
tion of  Children  Series  Leaflet,  No.  4,  Boston,  1911. 

Vogt,  Paul  L.  The  Village  as  a  Factor  in  Social  Progress.  Confer- 
ence Social  Work,  1918,  pp.  473-80. 

Waugh,  Frank  A.     Rural  Improvement,  Judd,  N.  Y.,  1914. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

LEADERSHIP 

LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY  * 

CHARLES   R.    COOLEY 

IT  is  plain  that  the  the6ry  of  ascendency  involves  the  question 
of  the  mind's  relative  valuation  of  the  suggestions  coming  to  it 
from  other  minds;  leadership  depending  upon  the  efficacy  of  a 
personal  impress  on  to  awaken  feeling,  thought,  action,  and  so  to 
become  a  cause  of  life.  While  there  are  some  men  who  seem  but 
to  add  one  to  the  population,  there  are  others  whom  we  cannot 
help  thinking  about;  they  lend  arguments  to  their  neighbors' 
creeds,  so  that  the  life  of  their  contemporaries,  and  perhaps  of 
following  generations,  is  notably  different  because  they  have 
lived.  The  immediate  reason  for  this  difference  is  evidently  that 
in  the  one  case  there  is  something  seminal  or  generative  in  the 
relation  between  the  personal  impression  a  man  makes  and  the 
mind  that  receives  it,  which  is  lacking  in  the  other  case. 

We  are  born  with  what  may  be  roughly  described  as  a  vaguely 
differentiated  mass  of  mental  tendency,  vast  and  potent,  but  un- 
formed and  needing  direction.  This  instinctive  material  is  be- 
lieved to  be  the  outcome  of  age-long  social  development  in  the 
race,  and  hence  to  be,  in  a  general  way,  expressive  of  that  devel- 
opment and  functional  in  its  continuance.  The  process  of  evolu- 
tion has  established  a  probability  that  a  man  will  find  himself 
at  home  in  the  world  into  which  he  comes,  and  prepared  to  share 
in  its  activities. 

Obscurely  locked  within  him,  inscrutable  to  himself  as  to 
others,  is  the  soul  of  the  whole  past,  his  portion  of  the  energy,  the 
passion,  the  tendency,  of  human  life.  Its  existence  creates  a 
vague  need  to  live,  to  feel,  to  act ;  but  he  cannot  fulfill  this  need, 

i  Adapted  from  "Human  Nature  and  the  Social  Order,"  Chap.  IX,  pp. 
283-286,  293-294,  297  and  310.  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  N.  Y.,  1902. 

581 


582  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

at  least  not  in  a  normal  way,  without  incitement  from  outside  to 
loosen  and  direct  his  instinctive  aptitude.  There  is  explosive  ma- 
terial stored  up  in  him,  but  it  cannot  go  off  unless  the  right  spark 
reaches  it,  and  that  spark  is  usually  some  sort  of  a  personal  sug- 
gestion, some  living  trait  that  sets  life  free  and  turns  restlessness 
into  power. 

It  must  be  evident  that  we  can  look  for  no  cut-and-dried  theory 
of  this  life-imparting  force,  no  algebraic  formula  for  leadership. 

The  prime  condition  of  ascendency  is  the  presence  of  undi- 
rected energy  in  the  person  over  whom  it  is  to  be  exercised :  it  is 
not  so  much  forced  upon  us  from  without  as  demanded  from 
within.  The  mind,  having  energy,  must  work,  and  requires  a 
guide,  a  form  of  thought,  to  facilitate  its  working.  All  views  of 
life  are  fallacious  which  do  not  recognize  the  fact  that  the  pri- 
mary need  is  the  need  to  do.  Every  healthy  organism  evolves 
energy,  and  this  must  have  an  outlet. 

If  we  ask  what  are  the  mental  traits  that  distinguish  a  leader, 
the  only  answer  seems  to  be  that  he  must,  in  one  way  or  another, 
be  a  great  deal  of  a  man,  or  at  least  appear  to  be.  He  must  stand 
for  something  to  which  men  incline,  and  so  take  his  place  by  right 
as  a  focus  of  their  thought. 

To  be  a  great  deal  of  a  man,  and  hence  a  leader,  involves,  on 
the  one  hand,  a  significant  individuality,  and,  on  the  other, 
breadth  of  sympathy,  the  two  being  different  phases  of  personal 
caliber,  rather  than  separate  traits.  It  is  because  a  man  cannot 
stand  for  anything  except  as  he  has  a  significant  individuality, 
that  self-reliance  is  so  essential  a  trait  in  leadership. 

All  leadership  takes  place  through  the  communication  of  ideas 
to  the  minds  of  others,  and  unless  the  ideas  are  so  presented  as 
to  be  congenial  to  those  other  minds,  they  will  evidently  be  re- 
jected. 

In  faee-to-face  relations,  then,  the  natural  leader  is  one  who 
always  has  the  appearance  of  being  master  of  the  situation.  He 
includes  other  people  and  extends  beyond  them,  and  so  is  in  a 
position  to  point  out  what  they  must  do  next.  Intellectually  his 
suggestion  seems  to  embrace  what  is  best  in  the  views  of  others, 
and  to  embody  the  inevitable  conclusion ;  it  is  the  timely,  the  fit, 
and  so  the  prevalent.  Emotionally  his  belief  is  the  strongest 
force  present,  and  so  draws  other  beliefs  into  it.  Yet,  while  he 


LEADERSHIP  583 

imposes  himself  upon  others,  he  feels  the  other  selves  as  part  of 
the  situation,  and  so  adapts  himself  to  them  that  no  opposition 
is  awakened;  or  possibly  he  may  take  the  violent  method,  and 
browbeat  and  humiliate  a  weak  mind ;  there  are  various  ways  of 
establishing  superiority,  but  in  one  way  or  another  the  consum- 
mate leader  always  accomplishes  it. 

The  onward  and  aggressive  portion  of  the  world,  the  people 
who  do  things,  the  young  and  all  having  surplus  energy,  need  to 
hope  and  strive  for  an  imaginative  object,  and  they  will  follow 
no  one  who  does  not  encourage  this  tendency.  The  first  requisite 
of  a  leader  is,  not  to  be  right,  but  to  lead,  to  show  a  way. 


LEADERSHIP 1 

E.    C.    HAYES 

LEADERSHIP  consists  largely  in  putting  the  proper  ideas  into 
the  minds  of  the  individuals  who  are  in  a  position  to  give 
them  effect  and  still  more  in  supptying  courage.  Most  things 
really  worth  doing  have  at  first  seemed  impracticable  to  the 
average  person.  But  when  there  appears  an  individual  having 
not  only  sufficient  imagination  and  enlightenment  to  see  what 
should  be  done,  but  also  sufficient  courage  to  believe  that  it  can 
be  done,  the  probability  of  the  achievement  has  begun.  The 
question  of  possibility  or  impossibility  with  reference  to  social 
improvements  is  largely  one  of  psychic  attitude  of  the  people. 
The  question  with  respect  to  most  desirable  social  changes  is 
not,  could  people  bring  them  about  if  they  would,  but  will  they 
will  to  do  so?  Such  changes  are  thought  impossible,  and  for  the 
time  being  are  so,  because  men  do  not  believe  their  neighbors 
will  do  their  duty.  The  man  who  first  says,  "I,  for  one,  will, 
and  we  together  can,"  who  breaks  down  the  hypnotism  of  the 
present  reality,  who  exhibits  confidence  to  his  fellows,  who 
makes  individuals  begin  to  think  "my  neighbors  will  do  their 
duty  and  therefore  it  is  worth  while  for  me  to  do  mine, ' '  thereby 
creates  new  social  possibilities. 

1  Adapted  from  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Sociology,  pp.  57-58,  Ap- 
ploton,  N.  Y.,  1919. 


584  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

RURAL  LEADERSHIP  l 

L.    H.    BAILEY 

KURAL  leadership  lies  in  taking  hold  of  the  first  and  com- 
monest problems  that  present  themselves  and  working  them 
out.  Every  community  has  its  problems.  Some  one  can  aid 
to  solve  these  problems.  The  size  of  the  problem  does  not 
matter,  if  only  some  one  takes  hold  of  it  and  shakes  it  out. 
I  like  to  say  to  my  students  that  they  should  attack  the  first 
problem  that  presents  itself  when  they  alight  from  the  train 
on  their  return  from  college.  It  may  be  a  problem  of  roads ;  of 
a  poor  school;  of  tuberculosis  in  the  herds;  of  ugly  signs  along 
the  highways,  where  no  man  has  a  moral  right  to  advertise 
private  business;  of  a  disease  of  apple  trees;  of  poor  seed;  of 
the  drainage  of  a  field;  of  an  improved  method  of  growing  a 
crop ;  of  the  care  of  the  forests.  Any  young  man  can  concentrate 
the  sentiment  of  the  community  on  a  problem  of  the  community. 
One  problem  solved  or  alleviated,  and  another  awaits.  The  next 
school  district  needs  help,  the  next  town,  the  next  county,  the 
next  state.  Every  able  countryman  has  much  more  power  than 
he  uses. 

The  scale  of  effort  in  the  open  country  is  so  uniform  that 
it  ought  to  be  easy  to  rise  above  it.  I  do  not  see  how  it  is 
possible  for  an  educated  young  man  to  avoid  developing  leader- 
ship in  the  open  country,  if  only  he  attacks  a  plain  homely  prob- 
lem, is  not  above  it  and  sticks  to  it. 

It  does  not  follow  that  all  leadership  will  be  reached  for.  It 
will  come  to  a  man. 


THE  SECRET  OF  INFLUENCE2 

JAMES   BRYCE 

THERE  are  at  least  four  elements,  two  or  more  of  which  will 
be  found  to  be  always  present  in  whoever  leads,  or  is  trusted 

i  Adapted  from  "The  State  and  the  Farmer,''  pp.  172-176,    (Macmillan, 
N.  Y.,  1908). 

-  Adapted  from  Chambers'  Journal,  7th  Series,  Vol.  I. 


LEADERSHIP  585 

by,  or  inspires  those  among  whom  his  lot  is  cast.  The  first  is 
intellectual  independence  and  the  thing  we  call  initiative,  by 
which  I  mean  the  power  of  thinking  for  one's  self  instead  of 
borrowing  thoughts  from  others,  and  of  deciding  on  a  course 
for  one's  self  instead  of  following  the  advice  of  others. 

The  second  is  tenacity  of  purpose,  the  capacity  to  adhere 
to  a  view  once  adopted  or  a  decision  once  taken.  Whoever, 
wanting  this,  lets  himself  be  blown  about  by  every  wind  of 
doctrine  or  every  pressure  of  menace  or  persuasion  may  be  a 
very  acute  man  or  a  very  adroit  man,  but  will  never  impress 
himself  on  others  as  a  person  to  be  followed. 

The  third  element  is  a  sound  judgment,  fit  to  forcast  the 
results  of  action.  Few  people  can  look  beyond  the  next  move 
on  the  chess-board,  and  the  man  who  sees  several  moves  ahead, 
and  whose  forecast  is  verified  by  the  events,  soon  grows  to  be 
the  man  whose  advice  is  sought  and  taken.  His  neighbors  seek 
it.  Any  assembly  where  he  finds  himself,  from  a  town  meeting 
or  a  local  school  committee  up  to  a  legislature,  gladly  listens  to 
his  counsels. 

The  last  is  sympathy — that  is,  having  the  capacity  for  enter- 
ing into  the  thoughts  of  others  and  of  evoking  their  feelings 
by  showing  that  he  can  share  them.  The  power  of  sympathy 
is  so  far  an  affair  of  the  emotions  that  it  may  exist  in  persons 
of  no  exceptional  abilities.  Yet  it  is  a  precious  gift  which  often 
palliates  errors  and  wins  affection  in  spite  of  faults  and  weak- 
nessses.  It  is  a  key  to  unlock  men's  hearts,  and  the  heart  that 
has  given  confidences  attaches  itself  to  the  person  who  has  re- 
ceived them,  and  is  prone  to  surrender  itself  to  him  if  he  is  felt 
to  be  strong:. 


TRAINING  FOR  RURAL  LEADERSHIP  * 

JOHN    M.    GILLETTE 

WHEN  the  rural  problem  arose  in  its  full  significance,  almost 
the  entire  emphasis  was  placed  on  organization,  so  that  organi- 
zation became  the  shibboleth,  and  the  economic  factor  received 

i  Adapted  from  "Training  for  Rural  Leadership,"  Annals  of  the  American 
Academy,  LXVII:  87-96,  September,  1916. 


586  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

almost  exclusive  consideration.  But  with  the  passage  of  time 
the  farmers  have  become  wiser  and,  imbued  with  a  larger  degree 
of  humanistic  sentiment,  they  are  now  discussing  what  sort  of 
institutions  will  turn  out  the  best  men  and  women.  And  it  is 
very  significant  that  the  perception  has  gradually  arisen  that 
a  rural  leadership  is  an  indispensable  means  to  the  attainment 
of  permanent  improvement. 

I  consider  the  prime  requisites  of  a  productive  rural  leader- 
ship the  power  of  initiative,  organizing  ability,  sympathy  with 
human  aims,  trained  intelligence,  and  vision  and  outlook.  Up 
to  the  present  time,  for  community  purposes,  the  country  has 
depended  on  a  transient  leadership  from  the  outside  in  the  shape 
of  itinerant  preac-hers  and  teachers,  and  for  purposes  of  produc- 
tion, on  the  occasional  able  farmer  and  the  visiting  expert.  Due 
reflection  over  the  situation  leads  us  to  think  that  such  sources 
will  never  prove  sufficient  or  efficient,  and  that  what  the  country 
wants  most  is  men  and  women  who  by  their  training  are  at 
one  with  farm  life  and  whose  influence  is  ever  present  because 
they  live  in  the  country  and  have  their  interests  there. 

Several  kinds  of  agencies  may  contribute  toward  supplying 
a  leadership  of  the  right  kind.  Our  institutions  of  higher  learn- 
ing must  devote  more  attention  to  training  men  and  women  for, 
country  service.  Those  which  train  pastors,  teachers  and 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  workers  should  establish  courses  of  instruction,  the 
content,  spirit  and  emphasis  of  which  will  serve  to  specialize 
their  students  for  constructive  work  in  rural  institutions.  The 
nature  of  the  rural  community  must  be  emphasized,  its  particu- 
lar problems  studied,  and  the  agencies  capable  of  supplement- 
ing and  improving  agricultural  life  receive  much  consideration. 
When  training  schools  renounce  the  absurd  notion  that  general 
training  courses  qualify  equally  well  for  rural  and  urban  serv- 
ice, a  great  step  in  advance  will  have  been  taken.  Educating 
individuals  specifically  for  rural  service  has  the  double  advan- 
tage of  qualifying  them  to  carry  on  constructive  undertakings 
and  of  retaining  them  in  that  service  because  their  qualifica- 
tions tend  to  make  them  ineligible  for  urban  positions. 

Much  is  being  accomplished  by  the  county  agent  and  the  co- 
operative demonstrator  which  the  agricultural  colleges  have 
educated  for  country  service.  The  various  states  are, 


LEADERSHIP  587 

especially,  placing  many  county  agents  in  the  field,  and  they 
have  proved  themselves  helpful  in  furthering  not  only  produc- 
tion but  community  undertakings  of  different  kinds.  Many 
states  have  county  and  city  high  schools  which  are  giving  in- 
struction in  agriculture  and  farm  subjects,  and  the  occasional 
state  agricultural  high  school  is  a  still  more  intensified  ap- 
proach to  the  desired  goal.  Summer  chautauquas  with  their 
lectures  and  instruction  on  farm  life  and  with  their  visiting 
groups  of  farm  boys  and  girls;  farmers'  institutes;  farmers' 
clubs,  and  associations  of  farmers'  clubs;  and  kindred  organi- 
zations are  helpfully  contributing  to  the  establishment  of  a  con- 
structive point  of  view  concerning  farm  life  and  its  problems. 
However,  the  institution  which  is  needed  to  reach  the  masses 
of  country  children  and  to  do  most  to  create  an  abiding  interest 
in  rural  affairs  is  one  which  is  located  in  the  rural  neighbor- 
hood, which  touches  and  ministers  to  the  lives  of  the  residents 
daily,  and  which,  filled  with  an  agrarian  content  and  spirit,  exer- 
cises an  abiding,  molding  influence  on  the  young  in  the  direc- 
tion of  rural  undertakings  and  improvement.  The  consoli- 
dated rural  school,  with  communityized  building  and  equipment, 
a  corps  of  efficient  teachers,  a  teacherage,  experimental  plot, 
graded  and  ruralized  curriculum,  and  having  high  school  facili- 
ties as  an  organic  part  of  the  socialized  course  of  instruction, 
possesses  the  greatest  power  of  -appeal  because  it  is  articulated 
with  actual  farm  life  and  because  it  is  within  reach  of  all. 


THE  SOURCES  OF  LEADERSHIP1 

JOHN    R.    BOARDMAN 

THERE  are  four  distinct  sources  which  may  be  expected  to 
yield  valuable  material  for  the  various  leadership  positions  in 
the  social  organization.  The  first  and  most  obvious  is  the  group 
of  persons  who  are  already  leaders.  Attention  is  called  to  this 
source  because  it  demands  careful  examination.  Are  these 
leaders  being  used  in  their  proper  places  and  if  so  is  their  lead- 

i  Adapted  from  "Community  Leadership,"  a  course  in  social  engineering 
for  village  and  country  communities.  Bureau  for  Leadership  Training, 
N.  Y.,  1914. 


588  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


ership  ability  being  used  to  its  full  power?  Are  these  leaders 
doing  more  than  one  thing?  These  are  important  questions 
and  demand  careful  answer.  There  are  also  other  leaders  who 
are  not  conspicuous  who  need  attention.  They  are  leaders  of 
obscure  groups,  natural  leaders  of  small,  informal  collections 
of  people.  They  are  real  leaders,  vitally  related  to  the  groups 
they  serve.  They  should  not  be  disturbed,  under  ordinary  con- 
ditions, and  unless  we  discover  their  present  leadership  relation 
we  are  apt  to  consider  them  for  other  positions  with  consequent 
social  loss.  On  the  other  hand  these  persons  may  not  be  prop- 
erly placed.  They  may  be  able  to  render  better  service  at  other 
points  in  the  social  organization  but  they  should  not  be  changed 
unless  the  desirability  of  the  transfer  is  very  apparent. 

The  second  source  of  leadership  material  is  the  vocations  of 
people, — the  business  in  which,  they  are  regularly  engaged. 
Many  trades  and  professions  are  of  definite  social  value  in  an 
indirect  way.  Many  business  and  professional  men  could  make 
their  business  relations  a  source  of  social  benefit  and  leader- 
ship service.  Carpenters,  machinists,  engineers,  physicians, 
dentists,  lawyers,  teachers,  bankers,  veterinarians,  florists, 
gardeners,  poultrymen,  farmers  and  many  others  are  doing 
things  as  a  business  which  are  of  genuine  interest  to  other  people 
in  the  community  from  a  purely  cultural  standpoint.  Such 
people  are  the  very  best  ones  to  give  practical  talks  and  courses 
of  informal  lectures  on  their  special  subjects.  They  can  con- 
duct effective  study  classes  for  several  weeks  at  proper  seasons  of 
the  year  and  render  a  piece  of  social  service  that  is  of  positive 
value. 

A  third  class  of  people  who  have  great  potential  leadership 
are  the  people  who  have  vocations  or  hobbies.  They  are  in- 
terested in  birds,  insects,  wild  animals,  pets,  trees,  flowers,  in- 
ventions, astronomy,  minerals,  chemistry,  stamps,  coins,  antiques, 
and  many  other  things.  These  people  are  always  glad  of  a 
chance  to  talk  with  others  about  these  hobbies  of  theirs  and 
there  are  always  small  groups  of  people  who  covet  the  privilege 
of  sitting  at  the  feet  of  these  hobbyists  and  learning  something 
about  the  things  in  which  they  are  specialists.  Many  times 
these  hobbyists  have  splendid  collections  of  things  along  their 
line.  These  may  be  made  the  basis  for  evening  after  evening  of 


LEADERSHIP  589 

the  finest  social  intercourse, — that  which  has  real  educational 
value.  Such  people  are  real  leaders,  as  well  as  the  finest  kind 
of  teachers.  The  groups  which  gather  about  them  are  real  social 
organizations.  The  more  of  such  groups  there  are  in  the  com- 
munity the  better.  It  is  of  such  groups  that  a  vital  social 
structure  is  built.  They  make  a  valuable  contribution  to  the 
socialization  of  the  community,  especially  with  reference  to  the 
younger  people  of  the  community. 

A  fourth  source  of  leadership  material  is  worthy  of  attention. 
Leaders  can  be  made  to  order,  they  can  be  grown  from  seed. 
Social  engineers  frequently  meet  a  demand  for  the  organization 
of  certain  groups  for  which  there  is  no  available  leader.  It 
becomes  necessary  then  to  select  some  person  who  can  fit  himself 
for  the  work  by  definite  study  and  experience.  It  is  possible 
to  take  many  boys  and  girls  and  by  proper  training  prepare  them 
to  become  leaders  in  some  special  line. 

These  four  sources  should  furnish  all  the  leadership  needed  for 
the  largest  possible  development  of  the  social  organization  of 
any  community. 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  RURAL  LEADERSHIP  1 

G.    WALTER   FISKE 

I  HAVE  never  heard  it  suggested  that  there  is  any  dearth  of 
latent  leadership  in  country  life.  The  topic  assigned  me  seems  to 
assume  that  there  is  a  lack  of  developed  leadership,  and  I  believe 
that  this  is  generally  true.  The  question  at  once  arises:  Why 
should  leadership  be  lacking  in  the  country  if  most  city  leaders 
in  business,  politics,  and  religion  were  country-bred?  Opinions 
on  this  point  vary,  but  it  seems  to  be  undoubted  that  city 
people  who  were  country-born  furnish  fully  their  share  of 
urban  community  leadership,  the  percentages  suggested  run- 
ning from  50  to  90  per  cent.  In  a  casual  reference  just  now  to 
" Who's  Who  in  America,"  I  notice  that  out  of  the  first  100 
names  selected  quite  at  random,  sixty-eight  were  born  in  the 
country.  Leadership  still  comes  in  considerable  measure  from 

1  Adapted  from  Publications  of  the  American  Sociological  Society,  Vol. 
XI,  54-70,  Dec.,  1916. 


590  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


the  country.  How  long  this  will  continue,  with  the  growth 
of  cities  accelerating,  no  one  can  say  with  assurance;  but  in 
the  nature  of  things  there  are  some  reasons  for  believing  that 
the  more  natural  environment  of  the  open  country  and  the  vil- 
lage will  long  -continue  to  furnish  the  city  with  much  of  its  best 
leadership  material.  Certainly  so,  if  what  Professor  Giddings 
says  is  true :  ' '  Genius  is  rarely  born  in  the  city.  The  city  owes 
the  great  discoveries  and  immortal  creations  to  those  who  have 
lived  with  nature  and  with  simple  folk.  The  country  produces 
the  original  ideas  and  forms  the  social  mind."  Professor  M.  T. 
Scudder  even  ventures  to  offer  a  definite  explanation  for  the 
great  influence  of  rural  leaders  in  the  city:  "The  fully  de- 
veloped rural  mind,  the  product  of  its  environment,  is  more 
original,  more  versatile,  more  accurate,  more  philosophical,  more 
practical,  more  persevering,  than  the  urban  mind.  It  is  a  larger, 
freer  mind  and  dominates  tremendously.  It  is  because  of  this 
t}rpe  of  farm-bred  mind  that  our  leaders  have  largely  come  from 
rural  life." 

If  all  this  is  true — even  making  large  allowance  for  over- 
emphasis— why  should  we  worry  over  leadership  in  rural  life? 
Have  all  rural  leaders  gone  to  the  city?  If  leadership  thrives 
under  the  open  sky,  why  not  let  it  alone  there  ?  Will  not  rural 
life  develop  its  own  leaders  anyway?  This  was  the  claim  of  a 
keen  and  successful  woman  farmer,  who  told  me  that  she  was 
very  weary  of  rural  uplifters  and  country-life  specialists  who 
live  in  New  York  City.  "If  city  folks  would  only  let  us  alone, 
there  would  be  no  rural  problem,"  she  testily  remarked!  Yet 
the  fact  remains,  as  we  are  all  aware,  that  country  life  is  seri- 
ously deficient  in  two  social  elements:  cooperation  and  leader- 
ship; and  these  two,  though  not  identical,  are  inseparable,  for 
it  takes  the  latter  to  develop  the  former. 

Rural  Individualism.  It  is  certainly  true  that  an  unsocial 
streak  of  failure  in  cooperation  runs  through  all  phases  of 
country  life  and  weakens  all  sorts  of  rural  institutions.  Dr. 
Butterfield  rightly  calls  the  American  farmer  a  "rampant  in- 
dividualist." He  is  apt  to  reveal  the  fact  in  all  relations  of 
life.  With  all  the  gains  made  by  the  modern  centralized  school, 
rural  education  is  still  dispensed  generally  on  the  old  school- 
district  plan,  with  niggardly  supervisors  of  no  educational  vision 


LEADERSHIP  591 

and  with  each  pupil  buying  his  own  textbooks.  Roads  are  re- 
paired likewise  by  township  districts,  by  /ery  local  enterprise, 
sometimes  still  with  individuals  working  oat  their  taxes  on  the 
roads.  Churches  are  maintained  on  the  retail  plan,  the  minister 
being  hired  by  the  year  or  even  by  the  week,  the  churches  them- 
selves being  altogether  too  numerous  and  too  small  for  effective- 
ness because  of  selfish  insistence  upon  individual  views,  mutually 
competitive,  not  cooperative.  It  is  the  same  story  in  rural  busi- 
ness. Both  in  production  and  in  distribution  farmers  are  slowly 
learning  the  lesson  of  working  together  and  reaping  the  benefits 
of  cooperation,  which  economizes  costs  and  makes  for  efficiency 
and  .community  welfare.  Cooperative  agreements  in  business 
have  even  been  repudiated  by  farmers  under  the  stress  of  tempta- 
tion to  personal  gain,  while  rural  distrust  of  banks  and  organized 
business  is  still  proverbial,  and  is  not  confined  to  remote  sec- 
tions. 

Socialization  and  Urbanization.  These  generalizations  do  not, 
of  course,  hold  in  the  more  progressive  rural  communities. 
There  we  find  two  parallel  processes  developing  rather  notice- 
ably, the  socializing  and  the  urbanizing  of  country  life.  They 
are  similar  movements,  but  not  identical.  Socialization  is  a 
civilizing  process  in  which  individuals,  by  merging  their  rights, 
interests,  and  functions,  develop  community  efficiency  through 
group  action.  Very  naturally  this  process  develops  most  rapidly 
in  the  more  favorable  city  environment ;  but  it  is  now  making 
progress  also  in  the  country  against  the  conservatism  and  ultra- 
individualism  of  rural  life. 

Meanwhile  in  all  but  the  most  remote  rural  sections  (and  even 
there  through  the  influence  of  the  mail-order  catalogues)  you 
may  observe  the  rapid  urbanization  of  country  life.  I  mean 
by  this  the  spread  of  the  social  ideals  and  customs  of  the  city. 
To  the  extent  that  these  customs  and  ideals  are  constructive  and 
adaptable  to  a  wholesome  country  life,  to  that  extent  this  urban- 
ization makes  for  socialization  and  should  be  welcomed.  Un- 
questionably this  process,  hastened  by  increasing  intercommuni- 
cation, is  rapidly  making  country  life  and  city  life  more  alike, 
and  is  extending  the  limits  of  suburban  life.  It  is  to  be  hoped 
that  this  urbanizing  will  not  destroy  the  unique  social  conscious- 
ness of  rural  civilization  and  make  it  simply  imitative  of  the 


592  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

city.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  city  may 
more  effectively  teach  the  country  the  secrets  of  socialization, 
so  that  the  social  efficiency  of  urban  life  may  be  reproduced  in 
the  country.  Rural  people  need  to  discover  how  city  people 
work  together  in  compactly  organized  business  corporations; 
how  they  adjust,  by  many  mutual  concessions,  their  complicated 
civic  relations,  how  they  coordinate  sympathy  and  human  needs, 
and  administer  a  network  of  social-service  agencies,  with  greater 
and  greater  efficiency  through  perfected  organization. 

Why  This  Lack  of  Socialization?  I  hasten  to  avoid  the  suspi- 
cion of  lack  of  sympathy  with  country  life  by  saying  that  I 
believe  this  lack  of  socialization  and  cooperation  in  the  country 
to  be  due  less  to  selfishness  than  to  lack  of  social  opportunity 
and  practice.  In  fact,  these  unsocial  tendencies  are  really  the 
result  of  overdeveloped  rural  strength  of  character.  The  pioneer 
life  of  the  American  farmers  has  developed  heroic  virtues  in 
their  personality  which  have  made  them  as  a  class  the  most  self- 
reliant  in  history.  This  self-reliance  has  been  overdeveloped. 
It  has  led  to  self-aggrandizement,  jealousy  of  personal  rights, 
slowness  to  accept  advice,  proneness  to  lawsuits  over  property, 
thrifty  frugality  to  a  fault,  indifference  to  public  opinion,  dis- 
regard of  the  opinions  of  experts.  Doing  so  much  of  their 
thinking  alone,  they  do  not  easily  yield  to  argument.  Working 
with  the  soil  and  with  things  more  than  with  persons,  they  do 
not  easily  respond  to  leadership.  They  are  likely  to  view 
strangers  with  suspicion  because  they  do  not  know  them;  and 
for  the  opposite  reason  often  they  do  not  trust  their  neighbors 
nor  cooperate  with  them  because  they  do  know  them.  Self-re- 
liance overstressed  leads  them  to  distrust  any  initiative  but  their 
own.  They  refuse  to  recognize  superiority  in  others  of  their 
own  class.  Positively,  the  resulting  failure  in  cooperation  ex- 
plains the  jealousies  and  feuds  all  too  common  in  rural  neighbor- 
hoods ;  and,  negatively,  it  accounts  for  the  lack  of  social  organi- 
zation and  effective  leadership.  Again  let  me  remind  you  of  my 
caveat,  that  I  am  not  speaking  of  the  more  progressive  rural 
communities,  but  of  rural  life  in  general.  I  believ.e  that  these 
generalizations  are  less  true  in  the  West,  but  most  true  in  the 
South  and  the  older  sections  of  the  North  and  East,  outside  of 
urban  tracts. 


LEADERSHIP  593 

The  Difficulty  of  Developing  Rural  Leadership.  I  am  now 
ready  to  offer  a  suggestion  in  answer  to  the  question:  // 
country  life  furnishes  so  much  leadership  for  the  city,  why  is 
leadership  a  problem  in  the  country?  I  am  confident  that  there 
is  no  dearth  of  latent  leadership  in  the  country.  In  general, 
I  do  not  believe  it  has  been  depleted  by  the  exodus  to  the  city, 
though  in  some  places  this  has  been  serious.  In  general,  it  is 
mainly  the  question  of  developing  the  qualities  of  the  leader- 
ship which  are  latent  in  the  finest  types  of  young  men  and 
women  living  in  the  country. 

You  will  readily  grant  me  that  there  is  much  latent  leader- 
ship in  country  boys.  Some  of  these  boys  go  to  the  city,  and 
there  under  urban  stimulus  and  opportunity  this  latent  initia- 
tive develops  strongly,  and  they  become  vigorously  influential 
personalities.  Others  of  them,  equally  well  endowed,  remain 
in  the  country,  and  though  they  may  become  successful  along 
individualistic  lines  and 'accumulate  property,  their  latent  leader- 
ship fails  to  develop.  It  fails  to  develop  because  of  certain  ele- 
ments in  the  rural  environment :  the  lack  of  sufficient  stimulus 
and  challenge,  the  lack  of  urgent  opportunity  for  self-expres- 
sion, possibly  because  of  real  social  repression,  an  inhibition  of 
social  effort  due  to  the  positive  disapproval  of  inhospitable 
minds.  This  is  why,  in  so  many  rural  villages,  there  is  a  per- 
sistent and  deep-seated  conviction  that  it  is  impossible  to  develop 
effective  leadership  for  cooperation  in  community  welfare  until 
there  have  been  a  few  judiciously  selected,  providential  funerals. 
Hence  an  utterly  stagnant  community,  socially  speaking. 

Again  let  me  voice  a  gentle  plea  for  consideration  and  charity. 
Mentally  I  rate  the  average  rural  citizen  high,  but  he  is  likely 
to  be  socially  awkward — mainly  for  lack  of  social  stimulus  and 
practice.  The  term  "social  awkwardness"  may  seem  a  rather 
strange  one  until  we  consider  it  in  its  relations.  The  country 
boy  is  likely  to  be  awkward  physically  because  of  the  overde- 
velopment of  the  large  muscles  and  the  underdevelopment  of  the 
accessory  muscles.  Hence  his  very  gait  sometimes  suggests  that 
he  is  still  walking  the  furrows.  He  may  be  awkward  also  men- 
tally. Though  possessing  strong  mentality  and  accustomed  to 
do  clear  thinking,  he  has  lacked  variety  of  stimuli,  and  still  lacks 
sufficient  opportunity  for  self-expression.  He  probably  thinks 


594  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

more  profoundly  than  his  city  cousin,  but  less  alertly  and  rapidly. 
His  social  awkwardness  is  a  correlative  fact  of  which  he  is 
deeply  conscious,  and  which  explains  his  proverbial  bashfulness, 
especially  evident  in  the  presence  of  city  girls  accustomed  to 
dancing-school  escorts.  This  in  turn  acts  as  a  powerful  in- 
hibitive  and  discourages  any  social  prominence.  He  is  socially 
awkward  because  of  the  lack  of  social  practice  and  adequate  self- 
expression. 

What,  then,  are  some  of  the  elements  in  the  rural  environ- 
ment which  constitute  this  social  repression  to  which  I  referred 
a  moment  ago,  which  inhibits  the  development  of  the  strong 
latent  leadership  in  rural  personality?  In  summary  I  would 
suggest:  lack  of  the  social  stimulus  which  comes  from  city 
crowds  and  city  life ;  lack  of  sufficient  challenge  to  self-expression, 
with  personal  growth  under  social  pressure;  lack  of  variety  of 
social  opportunities  to  challenge  variety  of  personal  talent; 
and  lack  of  adequate  training  in  leadership,  acutely  felt  by 
conscientious  people  who  would  gladly  lead  in  community  wel- 
fare if  they  felt  they  could.  Then  there  is  strong  positive  in- 
hibition by  rural  conservatism  in  general ;  positive  repression  of 
ambition  by  neighborly  jealousy  (a  genial  combination  of 
terms ! )  ;  the  deterrent  effect  of  long  mutual  acquaintance  with 
its  leveling  influence,  too  apt  to  level  down  all  latent  leader- 
ship by  saying  in  effect,  "Start  something  if  you  dare!  Show 
your  head  as  a  leader,  if  you  want  to  lose  it ! "  Such  rural  social 
democracy  is  all  too  common,  and  it  keeps  everybody  plodding 
along  in  the  ruts  instead  of  venturing  forth  in  community  lead- 
ership. Hence  the  homespun  leader  is  discounted  and  emerges 
from  the  crowd  with  great  diffidence. 

The  farmer  is  the  natural  leader  in  country  life.  Yet  to  a 
remarkable  degree  he  falls  short  of  his  opportunity  in  leader- 
ship. He  constitutes  30  per  cent,  of  the  adult  male  population 
of  the  country  engaged  in  gainful  occupations,  yet  he  has  re- 
markably small  leadership,  for  instance,  in  politics.  There  are 
about  seventy  times  as  many  farmers  as  lawyers  in  the  land,  yet 
what  about  their  relative  influence?  Almost  60  per  cent,  of  our 
present  Congress  are  lawyers.  Barely  3  per  cent,  are  farmers. 
The  120,000  lawyers  in  America  constitute  less  than  one-half  of 
1  per  cent,  of  the  adult  male  workers.  Their  representation  in 


LEADERSHIP  595 

Congress  is  over  120  times  as  large  as  it  should  be,  whereas  the 
farmers'  representation  is  but  one-tenth  of  their  proportionate 
share;  that  is,  the  lawyer's  chance  for  political  leadership,  on 
the  basis  of  our  present  Congress,  is  1,200  times  that  of  the 
farmer. 

This  condition,  however,  is  not  likely  to  continue.  The  farmer 
is  beginning  to  discover  and  to  wield  for  himself  political  leader- 
ship. It  may  or  may  not  seem  significant  to  you  that  prac- 
tically every  great  rural  state  voted  last  month  for  the  President 
who  gave  rural  America  the  long-postponed  rural-credit  system, 
and  that  this  President  was  elected  over  the  protest  of  nearly 
every  great  urban  state  in  the  land.  It  is  also  worth  noting  that 
the  ''Farmers'  Non-partisan  Political  League"  which  cam- 
paigned North  Dakota  last  fall  with  the  slogan,  "A  farmers' 
government  for  a  farming  state,"  swept  the  state  clean  last 
month,  losing  but  one  candidate  on  the  state  ticket  and  electing 
eighty-one  out  of  113  members  of  the  legislature. 

Before  offering  some  specific  suggestions  in  detail  may  I  ven- 
ture a  few  generalizations  regarding  the  social  function  which 
we  call  leadership?  It  is  a  term  that  is  increasingly  used  in 
these  days.  Its  connotation  seems  simple,  but  it  is  seldom 
clearly  defined.  Professor  Cooley's  brief  definition  of  leader- 
ship as  "personal  ascendency"  is  excellent  as  far  as  it  goes. 
John  R.  Mott's  definition,  "Expert  service,"  is  perhaps  more 
descriptive  than  definitive.  To  me  leadership  is  personal  initia- 
tive, unusual  efficiency,  and  executive  ability  by  ivhich  an  out- 
standing personality  projects  his  ideals  and  purposes  through 
group  and  mass  activity.  It  involves  the  development  of  un- 
usual personal  efficiency  and  social  service  of  the  highest  poten- 
tial. Leadership  is  a  fascinating  thing,  not  simply  because  it 
is  the  exercise  of  power  and  appeals  to  selfish  ambition,  but  far 
more  because  it  means  superlative  self-expression,  the  projec- 
tion of  one's  best  self  into  life,  one's  maximum  service  of  his 
generation.  In  the  very  nature  of  things  leadership  involves  the 
development  of  personality,  growing  under  the  pressure  of  re- 
sponsibility, and  its  application  in  expert  service  of  the  com- 
munity. 

I  do  not  think  leadership  is  often  an  endowment.  Rather 
it  is  an  attainment,  a  conquest  through  struggle.  We  talk  about 


596  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

"born  leaders."  We  seldom  meet  them.  Leadership  is  rarely  a 
flash  of  genius.  It  is  a  growth,  a  patient  development.  Like 
most  genius,  it  is  the  result  of  hard  work,  painstaking  prepara- 
tion, a  process  of  adequate  education  and  discipline,  resulting 
in  the  progressive  outgrowing  of  one's  self  into  the  mental  and 
spiritual  stature  of  efficient  leadership.  Neither  do  I  conceive 
of  leadership  as  an  abstract  entity,  or  something  you  can  isolate, 
objectify,  and  gaze  at,  quite  apart  from  human  usefulness  and 
specific  functioning.  As  I  do  not  accept  the  old  "formal-disci- 
pline" theory  of  education,  "mental  discipline  in  general" 
means  little  or  nothing  to  me.  And  just  as  I  cannot  believe 
in  "general  training  of  the  judgment,"  for  instance,  I  take  little 
stock  in  leadership  in  general  as  a  personal  asset  or  endowment. 
Leadership  is  revealed  only  in  specific  functioning. 

However,  I  think  that  there  are  five  elemental  factors  which 
are  always  found  in  some  degree  in  leadership.  They  seem  to 
me  essential  in  all  kinds  of  worth-while  leadership.  They  are 
knowledge,  power,  skill,  character,  and  vision — knowledge,  the 
result  of  study  and  instruction,  the  master}^  and'  correlation  of 
facts;  power,  the  result  of  personal  development,  the  storing 
of  vital  energy  in  personality ;  skill,  the  result  of  training,  power 
guided  by  knowledge  and  made  facile  through  practice;  char- 
acter, the  moral  element  essential  in  all  genuine  leadership,  the 
resultant  of  moral  living,  "an  organized  set  of  good  habits  of 
reaction";  and  vision,  the  result  of  living  the  climbing  life  and 
developing  constructive  imagination.  It  is  the  leader's  vision 
which  steadies  our  confidence  in  him ;  for  we  trust  only  the  leader 
who  can  see  things  whole  and  in  their  relations. 

Rural  Life  Needs  the  Best.  I  make  no  apology  for  trying  to 
apply  these  high  ideals  of  leadership  to  the  social  needs  of 
country  life.  Oberlin  College  was  named  eighty-three  years  ago 
for  a  great  Alsatian  community  leader  and  philanthropist,  Jean 
Frederic  Oberlin,  who  had  died  seven  years  before  that  date 
after  a  long  career  of  usefulness.  He  was  an  educational 
prophet  anticipating  Froebel  by  forty  years  in  his  own  specialty. 
He  was  perhaps  the  greatest  country  pastor  in  history.  He  was 
a  community  builder,  a  civilization  restorer,  whose  services  won 
the  medal  of  the  Legion  of  Honor  from  his  king,  Louis  XVIII. 
He  represented  the  flower  of  eighteenth-century  French  culture, 


LEADERSHIP  597 

with  the  best  education  the  University  of  Strassburg  could  af- 
ford, and  he  developed  capacity  for  leadership  in  marked  de- 
gree ;  but  he  consecrated  this  leadership  on  the  obscure  altar  of 
country  life. 

I  have  little  patience  with  the  hoary  heresy  that  the  city  needs 
leadership  but  the  country  can  get  along  with  mediocrity.  Yet 
this  has  been  the  general  practice  of  the  past  two  generations 
in  America.  It  is  still  largely  true  in  relation  to  all  the  pro- 
fessions. Too  often  the  country  is  merely  the  colt's  pasture  for 
the  young  minister,  teacher,  doctor,  lawyer,  journalist,  etc. 
The  goal  is  the  city  when  apprenticeship  is  over.  Unfortunately 
this  is  not  ideal  for  either  city  or  country.  For  any  sort  of 
city  social  service  the  best  place  to  do  clinical  work  is  in  the 
city  itself,  or  time  is  wasted.  And  the  obverse  is  equally  true. 
The  ideal  rural  leadership  is  a  whole-life  service,  devoted  per- 
manently to  country  life.  I  realize  that  at  present  financial 
considerations  seriously  hamper  this  ideal.  The  result  is  that, 
with  our  underpaid  rural  leadership,  our  underpaid  country 
teachers,  ministers,  doctors,  etc.,  we  are  threatened  to-day  with 
a  peasant  leadership  in  the  country,  undertrained  and  inferior  in 
all  respects  to  their  comrades  in  the  city.  This  is  what  country 
life  is  rapidly  coming  to  unless  the  urban  dwellers  realize  soon 
their  need  of  adequately  paid  and  fully  trained  community 
leaders.  No  movement  can  rise  above  the  level  of  its  leader- 
ship. It  is  trite  to  say  that  rural  progress  is  lagging  because 
of  inadequately  trained  community  leadership.  The  broaden- 
ing of  country  life  and  its  rising  standards  put  increasing  de- 
mands upon  its  leaders  which  they  are  often  unable  to  meet. 
Rural  institutions  can  no  longer  serve  their  communities  ef- 
fectively under  the  leadership  of  men  lacking  in  the  very  es- 
sentials of  leadership.  Some  country  communities  of  genuine 
rural  culture  are  demanding  now  as  high-grade  personality  and 
training  in  their  leaders  as  the  cities  demand,  and  they  naturally 
refuse  to  respond  to  crude  or  untrained  leadership.  Our  col- 
leges meanwhile  are  educating  thousands  of  country-bred  boys 
and  girls  and  then  lavishly  sending  them  to  the  cities,  where 
all  professions  are  already  foolishly  overcrowded.  And  in  say- 
ing this  I  realize  fully  that  the  country  communities  must  be 
willing  to  furnish  a  life-chance  and  a  living  wage  to  these  bright 


598  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


young  people  before  they  deserve  to  get  them  to  invest  their 
lives  in  rural  service. 

I  believe,  then,  that  the  first  step  in  developing  rural  leader- 
ship is  not  the  training  of  the  individual,  but  the  training  of  the 
rural  community.  Rural  villages  must  be  given  higher  ideals 
of  leadership  and  of  community  spirit  before  they  will  appreciate 
and  support  the  leadership  they  need.  In  every  state  of  my 
acquaintance  the  agricultural  college  is  rising  magnificently  to 
its  opportunity  in  this  regard,  and  to  such  colleges  I  believe  we 
must  look  primarily  for  help.  They  are  probably  growing  more 
rapidly  than  any  other  institution  in  America.  They  are  not 
only  struggling  to  keep  pace  with  the  demands  made  upon  them 
for  technically  trained  rural  leaders,  but  through  their  varied 
extension  service  and  their  short  courses  in  the  winter  they  are 
also  making  great  gains  in  spreading  the  gospel  of  the  better 
country  life  with  higher  community  ideals. 

In  very  many  places  this  leaven  is  unquestionably  working, 
lifting  rural  life  to  higher  levels.  Every  rural  home  which 
catches  the  new  vision  becomes  a  center  of  social  influence  mak- 
ing for  better  days.  Every  farm  conducted  on  modern  lines  of 
scientific  agriculture  is  a  demonstration  center  of  great  value. 
To  raise  the  economic  level  of  farm  life  in  the  neighborhood  is 
a  real  gain  in  itself;  but  the  by-products  of  such  a  demonstra- 
tion are  also  noteworthy,  such  as  the  discovery  by  the  less  pro- 
gressive that  there  is  really  a  scientific  basis  underlying  farm- 
ing; that  the  cost  and  effort  of  education  are  justified  by  the 
results;  that  the  expert  really  knows,  and  that  trained  leader- 
ship is  worth  while;  in  short,  that  the  modern  standards  of 
efficiency  apply  to  rural  as  well  as  urban  life.  All  this  is  giving 
a  new  dignity  to  rural  life.  Farmers  are  rightly  becoming  more 
class-conscious,  and  farm  boys  are  finding  a  new  interest  and 
a  real  pride  in  progressive  fanning,  as  they  discover  the  infinite 
opportunity  for  technical  skill  involved  in  it,  making  it  not  a 
mere  matter  of  blind  drudgery  and  a  gamble  with  the  weather, 
as  they  had  supposed. 

By  the  same  method  of  demonstration  (the  only  method  which 
really  convinces  country  people)  community  social  standards  can 
also  be  raised,  as  communities  come  to  know  what  lias  actually 
been  accomplished  in  other  communities  that  are  more  progres- 


LEADERSHIP  599 

sive,  in  securing  popular  cooperation  in  community  enterprises 
and  building  up  a  real  socialization. 

Volunteer  Community  Leadership.  It  is  difficult  to  secure  or 
to  support  professional  leaders  for  rural  organizations,  and  when 
the  right  sorts  are  found,  they  are  usually  only  temporary.  It 
is  extremely  necessary  to  develop  a  volunteer  leadership  for  all 
local  enterprises.  This  gives  latent  talents  a  chance  to  develop 
through  self-expression  in  social  service,  and  it  secures  continuity 
of  leadership  and  stability  of  policy.  ...  I  do  not  believe  that 
our  problem  of  rural  socialization  will  ever  be  solved  finally  by 
outsiders.  Resident  forces  must  ultimately  accomplish  it.  The 
farmer  himself  and  his  natural  leaders  must  take  the  burden 
upon  them.  The  farm-bureau  agents  now  serving  over  1,200 
counties  in  the  United  States  have  a  conspicuous  opportunity  in 
this  relation  if  they  can  only  fit  themselves  to  meet  it.  They 
are  exactly  the  people  who  could  make  the  most  of  such  courses 
as  were  offered  in  the  Cornell  School  for  Leadership  in  Country 
Life.  It  is  evident  that  no  single  agency  or  type  of  agency  will 
be  able  to  handle  this  matter  successfully.  All  agencies  involved 
in  rural  redirection  and  in  specific  service  in  any  field  of  country 
life  must  share  the  burden.  The  rural  department  of  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association,  within  rather  narrow  geographical 
limits,  is  doing  a  fundamental  and  valuable  work.  Genuine 
centers  of  education  for  rural  life,  centralized  schools  with 
modern  teachers  and  equipment,  are  rapidly  meeting  the  com- 
munity need.  The  new  country  church,  the  community-serv- 
ing church,  when  you  can  find  it,  is  making  itself  useful  and  re- 
spected. The  pity  of  it  is  that  the  rural  church  is  too  frequently 
an  arrested  development,  sadly  weakened  by  divisions,  in- 
adequately equipped  and  manned,  and  lacking  any  social  vision 
and  community  program.  The  right  kind  of  a  church,  led  by 
the  right  sort  of  a  minister,  has  the  best  possible  chance  to  serve 
the  community  and  to  develop  the  latent  leadership  of  ambitious, 
right-minded  boys  and  girls.  But  to  accomplish  this,  united 
Christian  forces  are  essential.  Sectarianism,  that  curse  of  rural 
Christianity,  must  be  crucified  in  order  to  save  rural  religion. 
When  the  day  comes  that  rural  Christians  are  ashamed  to  be 
Methodists  or  Baptists  or  Disciples  because  it  prevents  their 
being  community  Christians,  then  we  shall  see  more  Christian 


600  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

rural  communities.  There  is  great  hope  of  the  spread  of  the 
community-church  movement.  From  Atlantic  to  Pacific  you 
may  find  such  churches,  not  simply  undenominational  union 
churches  with  no  outside  connection  and  missionary  outlet,  but 
a  local  union  of  churches  as  one  congregation,  having  diversity 
in  unity,  loyally  meeting  their  denominational  duties  abroad, 
but  being  an  absolute  unit  in  worship  and  community  service 
at  home.  Given  this  united  Christian  force  instead  of  a  jangle 
of  quarrelsome,  competitive  sects,  and  the  community  can  afford 
a  living  salary  for  a  whole  man,  a  manly  man,  for  a  minister, 
a  man  with  modern  training  and  with  the  social  vision.  And 
in  such  a  community  there  is  a  man's  job;  it  is  a  real  oppor- 
tunity for  community  building  as  well  as  religious  teaching,  and 
they  go  well  together.  And  not  the  least  of  such  a  count ry 
minister's  opportunities  for  usefulness  is  the  training  of  the 
latent  leadership  which  he  discovers  in  his  young  people.  I 
believe  that  an  intelligent  effort  should  be  made  to  enlist  and 
train  rural-minded  young  people  for  a  life-investment  in  the 
country  and  for  some  sort  of  community  leadership,  if  they  have 
the  capacity  for  it,  rather  than  to  encourage  them  to  go  to  the 
city,  where  many  of  them  will  be  social  misfits  and  partial  fail- 
ures. A  fair  share  of  country  boys  and  girls  must  stay  in  the 
country  or  city  and  country  alike  will  suffer;  and  it  must  not 
be  the  survival  of  the  unfit,  but  the  selection  of  those  best  fitted 
for  rural  success  and  community  service. 

There  has  been  such  remarkable  rural  progress  in  the  past 
generation,  and  even  during  the  present  decade,  that  we  have 
no  reason  for  pessimism  for  the  future.  The  rank  and  file  is 
unquestionably  rising;  the  leadership  will  surely  be  forthcom- 
ing. Rural  social  organization  has  been  fortunately  simple. 
I  share  with  Professor  Mann,  of  Cornell,  the  belief  that  an  era 
of  organization  is  probably  the  next  stage  of  the  country-life 
movement.  With  keen  vision  he  suggests : 

The  new  organizations  will  largely  be  farmer  made  and  controlled.  It  is 
the  stage  of  organized  self-help.  It  will  be  marked  by  an  apparently  rapid 
shift  from  individualism  to  a  social  consciousness  and  sense  of  copartner- 
ship. The  welding  process  is  on.  Group  spirit  is  accumulating.  Fanners 
as  individuals  will  become  less  independent;  farmers  as  a  class  will  be- 
come more  independent.  Evidences  of  personal  and  group  power,  large 


LEADERSHIP  601 

grasp,  and  achievement  will  be  outstanding.  In  reality  the  farmer  will 
be  seen  coming  into  his  own.  Leaders  of  this  awakened  rural  manhood 
must  be  clear-thinking,  direct,  and  of  superior  intelligence;  and  their 
foundations  must  be  laid  in  a  sure  understanding  of  economic  and  social 
laws  and  of  folk  psychology  superimposed  on  reliable  farm  knowledge. 

Expert  service  will  win  leadership ;  our  task  is  to  develop  rural 
experts. 


SEAMAN  A.  KNAPP  * 

ESSEX  COUNTY,  N.  Y.,  gave  to  America  one  of  the  greatest  men 
that  has  lived  in  this  or  in  any  age.  This  man  was  Seaman  A. 
Knapp,  born  in  December  16,  1833.  It  was  no  part  of  his  great 
work  to  lead  armies,  guide  political  parties,  or  write  essays  on 
the  theory  of  government  and  the  rights  of  man.  His  achieve- 
ments were  greater.  He  sought  freedom  and  independence  in 
the  soil,  and  he  found  both,  and  gave  them  to  the  world. 

A  sketch  of  the  first  seventy  years  of  his  life  is  merely  the 
story  of  his  preparation  for  a  great  career.  Dr.  Wallace 
Buttrick  summed  it  up  by  saying, ' '  Seventy  years  of  preparation 
for  seven  years  of  work" — a  work  that  is  referred  to  by  Dr. 
Walter  H.  Page,  the  Ambassador  to  England,  as  "the  greatest 
single  piece  of  constructive  educational  work  in  this  or  any  age. ' ' 

As  a  boy  he  took  advantage  of  such  schools  as  were  available 
in  that  early  day  in  the  country  districts  of  New  York.  Later 
he  entered  and  graduated  from  Union  College,  Schenectady, 
N.  Y.  He  taught  school  for  several  years  after  graduating. 
But  at  the  age  of  thirty-two  he  moved  to  Vinton,  Iowa,  and 
settled  on  a  farm.  There  he  regained  his  health  and  vigor. 
During  the  sojourn  in  Iowa  Dr.  Knapp  was  called  to  manage 
several  lines  of  work,  all  of  which  were  good  training  for  the 
greater  work  yet  to  be  done.  He  established  a  farm  paper. 
There  were  few  such  papers  in  the  country  at  that  time.  He, 
with  others,  conducted  an  agricultural  campaign.  The  first 
course  in  Agriculture  in  the  Iowa  College  was  organized  and  the 
graduation  of  the  first  class  took  place  during  his  incumbency 
as  professor  and  president. 

i  Adapted  from  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education  Bui.  No.  43,  Washington,  1913, 
pp.  26-29. 


602  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Another  crisis  in  Dr.  Knapp 's  life  came  about  this  time.  His 
health  gave  way  under  a  severe  attack  of  rheumatism.  Phy- 
sicians said  he  must  give  up  college  work.  Turning  his  face  to 
the  sunny  South  he  organized  a  great  development  company, 
bought  a  million  acres  of  land  in  southwest  Louisiana  and  sent 
invitations  all  over  the  Northwest,  "Come  South,  young  men, 
and  grow  up  with  the  country."  Several  thousand  came.  For 
many  years  he  had  believed  that  the  South  was  destined  for  a 
wonderful  future.  He  said,  "Here  is  a  people  of  pure  Anglo- 
Saxon  stock,  energetic  but  conservative,  without  much  admixture 
of  foreign  blood.  These  people  should  be  the  conservators  of 
the  best  American  traditions.  Here  is  a  productive  soil,  de- 
lightful climate,  and  long  growing  seasons." 

He  at  once  began  to  conduct  demonstrations  in  rice  growing 
and  diversified  farming  for  benefit  of  native  farmers  and  immi- 
grants. In  1898,  however,  he  was  authorized  by  the  Secretary 
of  Agriculture  to  visit  China,  Japan,  and  the  Philippines,  to 
make  rice  investigations.  In  1901  he  made  a  second  trip  to 
the  Orient;  he  went  to  Europe  in  1901  to  study  agricultural 
conditions,  and  later  to  Porto  Rico  to  report  on  agricultural 
resources  and  possibilities. 

His  training  was  complete 'after  seventy  years  of  study  to  begin 
his  great  work.  In  1903  the  Mexican  boll  weevil  began  to  make 
such  destruction  in  the  Texas  cotton  fields  that  Dr.  Knapp  was 
sent  into  Texas  to  fight  its  deadly  ravages.  He  began  by 
organizing  the  farmers  and  instituting  the  Farmers'  Cooperative 
Work.  Dr.  Knapp  visited  one  small  farm  near  Terrell,  Tex., 
about  twice  a  month  and  directed  operations  there.  Neigh- 
boring farmers  met  him  in  field  meetings.  At  the  close  of 
the  year  he  had  proved  that  cotton  could  be  grown  in  the  face 
of  the  boll  weevil,  and  was  urged  to  extend  his  teachings  and 
his  methods  throughout  the  whole  country  devastated  by  the 
pest.  The  next  year,  with  funds  furnished  by  Congress  and  by 
local  business  men,  he  appointed  a  few  agents  and  began  to  or- 
ganize different  counties  in  Texas.  The  work  soon  attracted 
the  attention  of  the  country.  Congress  enlarged  its  appropri- 
ation, local  aid  was  increased,  and  the  work  was  extended  to 
Louisiana  and  Mississippi.  About  this  time  the  General  Edu- 
cation Board  of  New  York  asked  to  be  allowed  to  appropriate 


LEADERSHIP  603 

money  for  similar  work  in  other  cotton  States.  In  a  few  short 
years  this  great  work  had  covered  the  entire  South,  had  a  force 
of  1,000  agents,  an  enrollment  of  100,000  farmers,  75,000  boys 
in  the  corn  clubs,  and  25,000  girls  in  the  canning  clubs.  Every 
State  in  the  South  began  to  show  an  increase  in  the  average  corn 
production  per  acre,  as  well  as  other  crops,  and  southern  corn 
club  boys  attracted  the  attention  of  the  world  by  producing 
more  than  200  bushels  of  corn  to  the  acre  at  low  cost.  Girls, 
too,  demonstrated  practical,  scientific  work  in  garden  and  home. 
During  the  year  of  his  death,  Russia,  Brazil,  England,  South 
Africa,  and  Argentina  sent  representatives  to  this  country  to 
study  the  demonstration  work.  Sir  Horace  Plunkett,  the  great 
Irish  reformer,  came  for  the  same  purpose,  arid  at  the  request 
of  the  King  of  Siam,  Dr.  Knapp  sent  one  of  his  agents  to  take 
charge  of  agricultural  matters  in  that  country. 

Dr.  Knapp  died  in  Washington,  D.  C.,  April  1,  1911.  But  he 
lived  long  enough  after  this  important  work  was  begun  to  see 
something  of  the  wonderful  results.  Although  his  work  was 
confined  chiefly  to  the  Southern  States  of  America,  every  State 
and  nearly  every  nation  has  felt  his  influence. 


HENRY  WALLACE  * 

HERBERT   QUICK 

IOWA  has  given  to  the  nation  three  great  figures  in  agriculture, 
who  were  also  a  trio  of  bosom  friends.  The  names  of  these  three 
are  Henry  Wallace,  James  Wilson  and  Seaman  A.  Knapp. 

James  Wilson  made  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  and  served 
as  its  secretary  for  so  long  that  he  was  dubbed  "The  Irre- 
movable. ' ' 

Seaman  A.  Knapp  went  to  Washington  with  his  friend  Wilson, 
and  became,  in  my  opinion,  the  greatest  educator  this  country 
has  produced.  He  took  advantage  of  a  law  appropriating  funds 
for  fighting  the  cotton-boll  weevil,  and  began  teaching  the 

i  Adapted  from  the  Country  Gentleman,  Vol.  81,  p.  737,  April  1,  1916. 


604  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

farmers  of  the  South  the  importance  of  diversified  farming  if 
they  were  to  escape  ruin.  He  fought  the  weevil  of  the  cotton 
boll  by  starting  the  South  on  her  change  from  cotton  alone  to 
cotton,  corn  and  live-stock.  And  incidentally  out  of  his  work 
grew  the  gigantic,  nation-wide  farm-demonstration  movement 
through  county  agents. 

When  Wilson  and  Knapp  went  from  Iowa  to  Washington, 
Wallace  stayed  in  Des  Moines  and  devoted  himself  to  his  life- 
long work  as  editor  of  Wallace's  Farmer. 

Two  of  the  trio  have  passed  over  the  river.  Dr.  Knapp 
died  in  the  harness  two  or  three  years  ago,  full  of  years,  honors 
and  good  deeds.  Uncle  Henry  Wallace  has  just  joined  him  in 
the  ranks  of  the  great  majority.  He  leaves  vacant  in  American 
life  a  position  so  unique  that,  though  he  was  not  at  the  time  of 
his  death,  nor  was  ever,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  the  holder  of  a 
public  office,  his  loss  will  be  felt  more  keenly  than  would  that 
of  a  thousand  men  who  have  been  elevated  to  places  of  eminence 
by  the  votes  of  the  people  or  by  appointment. 

Henry  Wallace  will  be  remembered  by  the  farmers  and  many 
others  when  the  great  mass  of  governors,  senators,  congressmen, 
justices  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and  cabinet  officers  of  the  day 
are  forgotten.  For  he  worked  with  the  people,  not  over  them. 

He  was  a  Pennsylvanian  who  as  a  young  man  identified  him- 
self with  the  farming  interests  of  the  Middle  West.  The  writer 
was  born  in  Iowa,  and  is  no  longer  young,  but  he  does  not 
remember  the  time  when  Henry  Wallace  was  not  a  strong,  quiet, 
uplifting  force  in  that  state  His  strength  was  exerted  like  that 
of  a  growing  tree,  which  heaves  the  ground  under  its  roots  by 
the  power  which  it  drinks  in  through  its  branches  out-spread 
in  the  sky.  Nothing  can  resist  such  a  force,  because  it  is  patient, 
unceasing,  tireless,  and  always  bears  upward  against  the  gross 
things  with  which  it  contends.  Like  the  tree,  too,  Uncle  Henry 
was  strong  because  his  roots  were  in  the  soil. 

He  was  a  good  writer,  but  he  never  tried  to  shine  as  a  fine 
writer.  He  chose  the  field  of  Iowa  journalism  at  a  time  when 
its  prospects  for  usefulness  were  far  brighter  than  its  chances 
of  business  success — mainly,  I  suspect,  because  he  was  a  preacher. 

He  had  been  a  minister  of  the  Gospel,  and  wanted  to  preach 
to  the  farmers  of  the  country  along  different  lines  from  those 


LEADERSHIP  605 

usually  followed  in  the  pulpit.  He  believed  the  truth  should 
be  emphasized  that  good  farming  is  a  good  way  of  serving  God, 
and  that  passing  down  to  future  generations  a  well-kept  farm, 
unimpaired  in  fertility  and  adapted  to  the  nourishment  of  a 
happy,  wholesome  life,  is  in  itself  an  act  of  worship  and  the 
best  possible  sort  of  partnership  in  the  purposes  of  the  Almighty, 
who  the  Scriptures  assure  us  gave  the  earth  to  the  children  of 
men. 

He  believed,  and  for  much  more  than  a  generation  he  taught 
every  week  to  many  thousands  of  his  followers,  that  the  earth 
God  gave  to  the  children  of  men  was  given  not  to  this  generation 
only,  to  be  mined,  robbed,  exploited  and  ruined  by  greed,  but  to 
all  future  generations  of  the  children  of  men  as  well;  and  that 
to  rob  mankind  a  thousand  years  hence  is  just  as  bad  as  to  rob 
our  neighbors  to-day. 

Who  is  thy  neighbor?  Those  on  earth  to-day  only?  No,  said 
Uncle  Henry,  thy  neighbor  is  the  human  being  who  comes  after 
thee  just  as  truly  as  is  the  one  who  walks  at  thy  side. 

It  was  this  philosophy  which  made  him  the  president  of  the 
National  Conservation  Congress,  and  constituted  him  a  tower 
of  strength  to  the  Conservation  movement.  It  needs  him  to-day 
more  than  ever  before,  and  will  suffer  by  his  loss.  He  wanted 
the  coal,  the  lands,  the  minerals,  the  gas,  the  oils,  the  forests 
and  the  water  power  of  the  nation  conserved  for  the  use  of  the 
children  of  men  to  whom  they  were  given,  and  not  for  some 
of  the  children  of  men.  But  mainly  he  spoke  for  the  soil. 

In  a  little  book,  "Letters  to  the  Farm  Folk,"  published  not 
long  before  his  death,  he  said  in  a  passage  on  the  social  life  of 
the  country  people: 

But,  you  say,  this  would  make  us  all  stockmen.  Well,  that's  what  we 
ought  to  be,  and  will  have  to  be  sooner  or  later,  if  we  are  to  have  any 
satisfactory  social  life  in  the  country.  Growing  grain  for  sale  off  the 
land  starved  the  soil.  I  am  speaking  now  for  the  voiceless  land.  It  will 
not  feed  you  unless  it  is  fed;  we  will  then  become  poorer  and  more  dis- 
couraged; and  how  can  we  have  any  satisfactory  social  life  among  poorly 
fed  and  discouraged  people? 

Do  you  think  Uncle  Henry  in  this  passage  was  speaking  of 
a  danger  of  to-morrow  only?  Not  so.  He  saw  when  he  wrote 
this  passage  all  the  centuries  of  the  future.  He  was  in  the 


(306  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

Corn  Belt,  as  I  was,  at  a  time  when  it  was  the  common  utter- 
ance of  many  farmers  that  their  soil  did  not  need  manure, 
and  that  it  was  cheaper  to  move  the  sheds  than  to  haul  the 
manure. 

He  lived  to  see  the  question  of  fertility  a  growing  one.  He 
lived  to  see  the  need  of  commercial  fertilizers  cross  the  Mississippi, 
in  spots — and  he  spoke,  as  he  did  as  president  of  the  National 
Conservation  Congress,  as  he  always  did,  "for  the  voiceless 
soil." 

There  is  a  revelation  as  to  the  bent  of  our  old  friend's  mind  in 
that  expression,  "the  voiceless  soil."  To  him  the  soil  was  not 
dead  at  all,  only  dumb.  It  was  the  stuff  of  human  life.  Sow  it 
with  dragon's  teeth,  and  it  will  produce  a  crop  of  armed  men 
who  will  fall  upon  and  destroy  one  another. 

Ignorance,  injustice,  oppression — these  are  the  dragon's  teeth 
with  which  our  American  soil  must  not  be  sown  or  they  will 
spring  up  armed  men  like  those  who  are  destroying  each  other 
in  the  Old  World  to-day.  In  the  preface  of  this  little  book, 
which  is  his  last  word  to  the  farm  folks  of  America,  Uncle  Henry 
said: 

The  conviction  has  been  growing  upon  me  of  late  years  that  the  biggest 
thing  on  the  farm  is  not  the  land  nor  the  live-stock,  but  the  farm  folk,  the 
people  who  live  on  the  farm  and  out  in  the  open  country.  These  letters 
therefore  will  not  be  agricultural,  but  human.  Do  you  know  that  the  big- 
gest thing  in  life,  whether  in  city  or  country,  is  just  to  be  a  fine  human 
being  interested  in  all  things  that  interest  or  should  interest  human  beings? 

SLOGAN   CENTERED   ABOUT    HAPPINESS 

His  slogan  for  years  was  Good  Farming,  Clear  Thinking,  Clean 
Living,  but  it  centered  about  the  welfare  and  happiness  of 
people.  Good  farming,  that  the  life  of  the  family  might  be  a 
well-nourished  life  economically,  and  that  the  soil  be  conserved; 
clear  thinking,  that  it  might  be  intellectual,  and  not  like  that  of 
sheep  and  goats  that  nourish  a  blind  life  upon  the  soil;  clean 
living,  because  the  life  that  is  not  based  upon  righteousness  rots 
and  makes  both  good  farming  and  clear  thinking  impossible. 

On  this  all-embracing  text  did  Uncle  Henry  Wallace  preach 
quietly,  persistently,  sanely  and  effectively  for  decades  to  one 
of  the  greatest  audiences  in  America.  What  greater  pulpit 


LEADERSHIP  607 

could  he  have  chosen  ?  Who  can  estimate  the  effect  this  preach- 
ing has  had  in  sweetening  and  uplifting  our  national  life,  and 
shall  have  for  generations  to  come?  For  thought  does  not  die 
with  the  thinker.  What  shall  a  man  do  to  have  eternal  life? 
Do  as  Uncle  Henry  Wallace  did. 

Even  in  this  world,  such  a  man 's  thoughts  live  in  other  minds 
to  all  ages.  "Our  echoes  roll  from  soul  to  soul,  and  grow  for- 
ever and  forever."  They  may  be  evil  echoes  or  good  ones. 
Those  of  Uncle  Henry  will  be  good. 

He  knew  the  soil.  He  not  only  knew  that  the  soil,  instead  of 
being  dead,  is  literally  teeming  with  life — he  also  understood 
its  moods. 

Did  you  ever  read  one  of  his  articles  on  some  phase  of  soil 
management?  Suppose,  for  instance,  it  was  on  the  subject 
of  clods;  he  made  it  interesting  and  always  useful.  He  knew 
why  the  soil  gets  cloddy,  and  just  how  harmful  clods  are  to 
crops.  He  knew  the  beneficence  of  tilth;  the  secrets  of  the 
warm,  air-filled  seed  bed  were  open  to  his  mind.  In  his  mind 
the  soil  had  place  as  the  universal  friend  of  humanity,  and 
through  him  the  voiceless  soil  found  utterance  for  its  claims. 

Uncle  Henry  was  a  very,  very  wise  man;  for  he  added  to 
those  of  his  own  long  life  the  experiences  of  others.  He  knew 
his  Corn  Belt  well,  and  all  the  better  because  he  knew  other 
regions  and  other  lands.  In  order  that  he  might  better  know 
Iowa,  he  studied  England,  Germany  and  Denmark. 

He  was  one  of  those  leaders  of  our  agricultural  thought  who 
almost  tremble  at  the  increase  in  tenant  farming,  caused  by  the 
flocking  of  successful  farmers  and  farm  families  to  town.  The 
"retired  farmer,"  rusting  out  a  short  life  in  town,  was  to  him 
a  national  problem;  and  the  transient,  year-to-year  tenant  was 
an  equally  grave  one.  He  once  wrote: 

At  present  the  law  allows  the  tenant  to  rob  the  land  or,  in  other  words, 
to  starve  it.  The  law  would  put  the  tenant  in  jail  if  he  starved  his  horses 
or  cattle,  but  we  allow  him  to  starve  the  land. 

The  law  would  put  the  landlord  in  jail  if  he  confiscated  the  horses  of  the 
tenant,  but  we  allow  him  to  confiscate  the  fertility  which  the  first-class 
tenant  stores  in  the  soil,  and  seem  to  think  it  is  all  right.  The  law  would 
put  the  tenant  in  jail  if  he  sold  the  personal  property  of  the  landlord,  but 
we  are  likely  to  approve  the  robbery  of  the  fertility  which  the  retired 
farmer  had  stored  in  the  soil  when  the  farm  was  his  home. 


608  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

• 

The  English  Government  has  solved  the  problem  in  Scotland  and  England 
by  compelling  the  tenant  to  put  back  into  the  land  the  manurial  equivalent 
of  the  grains/  he  sells  off  it;  by  preventing  him  from  selling  straw  and 
roots,  which  must  be  fed  to  live-stock  on  the  farm;  by  compelling  the  land- 
lord to  pay  the  tenant  for  the  manurial  value  of  the  food-stuffs  he  has 
purchased  and  fed  to  the  live-stock,  or  else  let  him  stay  until  he  has  used 
up  this  fertility;  and  also  by  forbidding  the  landlord  to  raise  the  rent  be- 
cause of  improvements  the  tenant  has  made. 

During  his  later  years  he  seldom  spoke  without  mentioning  this 
matter;  but  did  Uncle  Henry  advocate  the  passage  of  such  laws 
in  this  country  ?  No ;  but  he  did  urge  American  farmers — ten- 
ants and  landlords — to  think  about  these  things,  talk  them  over, 
and  study  the  problem.  No  law,  he  always  urged,  is  worth  any- 
thing until  it  has  public  opinion  behind  it. 

He  hoped  for  the  amendment  of  the  landlord's  lien  laws  so 
as  not  to  be  so  severe  on  the  tenants;  he  hoped  for  the  passage 
of  laws  giving  the  tenant  a  claim,  if  his  lease  was  not  renewed, 
for  the  fertility  that  he  had  placed  in  the  soil. 

Mostly  he  hoped  for  these  as  beginnings.  They  would  tend 
to  stop  this  everlasting  moving  about,  and  make  rural  society 
more  stable,  so  as  to  make  better  schools,  better  churches,  better 
neighborhoods. 

Uncle  Henry  is  gone,  but  he  leaves  behind  him  something  for 
us  all  to  consider — his  thoughts,  his  doctrines,  his  methods,  and, 
most  of  all,  the  fine  and  noble  lesson  of  his  life. 

There  were  no  years  of  * '  retirement ' '  for  him.  He  was  splen- 
didly active  to  the  very  end. 

He  was  a  successful  man.  I  am  glad  to  write  that.  He  died 
rather  well  off,  I  think;  but  that  is  of  small  consequence — he 
was  successful  anyhow,  for  he  lived  a  life  of  activity,  doing 
work  which  most  writers  would  have  called  drudgery,  but  which 
to  him  was  interesting  because  he  saw  all  there  was  in  it. 

Like  Joe  Wing,  whose  life  his  very  much  resembled,  he  made 
a  success  of  devoting  himself  to  writing  and  speaking  for  the 
farming  interests,  for  farm  living. 

I  wish  the  lives  of  Uncle  Henry  Wallace  and  Joseph  E.  Wing 
could  be  read  and  studied  by  every  farm  boy  in  the  United 
States. 

They  were  both  soldiers  of  the  common  good,  ennoblers  of 
the  common  life — and  both  of  them  proved  that  big  men  may 


LEADERSHIP  609 

build  great  careers  out  of  the  materials  which  surround  every 
fanner's  son  in  the  land. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

LEADERSHIP 

Boardman,  John  R.  Community  Leadership.  Bureau  for  Leader- 
ship Training,  N.  Y.,  1914. 

Butterfield,  K.  L.  Training  of  Rural  Leaders.  Survey,  33 :  13-14, 
Oct.  3,  1914. 

Campbell,  Walter  J.  Vital  Problems  in  Rural  Leadership.  Interna- 
tional Young-  Men's  Christian  Association  Press,  Springfield,  Mass. 

Cooley,  C.  H.  Human  Nature  and  the  Social  Order,  pp.  283-325, 
Scribner,  N.  Y.,  1902. 

Crafts,  Wilbur  F.  The  Potential  Resources  of  the  South  for  Leader- 
ship in  Social  Service.  In  the  Call  of  the  New  South,  pp.  311- 
322,  Proc.  Southern  Sociological  Congress,  Nashville,  Tenn.,  1912. 

Gillette,  John  M.  City  Trend  of  Population  and  Leadership.  The 
Quarterly  Journal  of  North  Dakota,  University,  N.  D.,  Oct.,  1910. 

Kirkpatrick,  E.  A.  Fundamentals  of  Sociology,  pp.  11-17.  Hough- 
ton,  Boston,  1916. 

Ross,  E.  A.     Social  Control,  pp.  276-78,  Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1901. 
Social  Psychology,  pp.  32-5,  Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1908. 

Suzzallo,  H.  Inaugural  Address  of  the  President  of  the  University 
of  Washington,  School  and  Society,  3:  469-73,  April  1,  1916. 

Terman,  L.  M.  A  Preliminary  Study  of  the  Psychology  and  Pedagogy 
of  Leadership.  Clark  University  Ped.  Sem.,  11 :"  413-451,  Wor- 
cester, 1904. 

Wilson,  Warren  H.  Leadership  of  the  Community.  In  his  The 
Church  of  the  Open  Country,  pp.  177-202,  Missionary  Education 
Movement,  N.  Y.,  1911. 


CHAPTER  XX 

THE  FIELD  OF  RUKAL  SOCIOLOGY 
THE  SOCIOLOGY  OF  RURAL  LIFE  * 

A.   R.    MANN 

SOCIOLOGY  is  the  study  of  human  experience.  It  views  the 
problems  of  life  from  the  standpoint  of  their  effects  on  the 
quality  of  the  human  beings  who  inhabit  the  earth.  In  its  ap- 
proach to  the  great  industrial  problems  of  the  day,  for  example, 
it  subordinates  the  important  questions  of  how  may  production 
be  increased  most  efficiently  and  economically  to  what  it  regards 
as  the  ultimate  question  of  the  effect  of  the  organization  of  indus- 
try, of  the  hours,  wages,  and  conditions  of  labor,  on  the  persons 
who  perform  that  labor.  We  say  that  sociology  concerns  itself 
with  the  human  values  rather  than  with  the  material  values. 

Not  that  the  sociologist  disregards  the  importance  of  the 
material  values,  or  the  production  of  wealth.  He  knows  how 
indispensable  these  are,  and  how  essential  it  is  that  the  processes 
of  wealth  production  shall  be  perfected  for  the  good  of  the  race. 
(He  is  concerned  with  every  factor  which  promotes  or  retards 
industrial  efficiency.  But  his  concern  is  not  for  increased  output 
and  more  wealth  for  the  sake  of  the  wealth,  but  for  the  sake  of 
the  persons  whose  lives  are  bettered  either  in  the  production 
or  in  the  use  of  that  wealth.  When  the  sociologist  contends 
for  an  increase  in  wages,  the  end  he  has  in  mind  is  not  that  the 
workman  may  have  a  larger  pay  check  and  more  money  in  his 
purse,  but  that  he  may  be  able  to  safeguard  the  health  of  his 
family  better,  may  educate  his  children,  may  gain  some  release 
from  the  mere  struggle  for  existence  to  devote  to  personal  devel- 
opment. Not  the  accumulation  of  wealth,  but  the  enlargement 
and  refinement  of  personality  is  the  end  the  sociologist  seeks; 

i  Adapted  from  The  Cornell  Countryman,  Vol,  XIV,  No.  6,  pp.  459-461, 
March,  1917. 


610 


THE  FIELD  OF  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY  611 

and  he  judges  everything  by  the  criterion  of  its  effect  on  human 
personality. 

One  of  the  first  obstacles  which  confronts  the  sociologist  is 
to  clear  the  path  so  that  the  real  end  may  be  distinguished  from 
the  means  for  the  accomplishment  of  that  end.  The  besetting 
sin  of  a  great  deal  of  our  present  conduct  of  life  is  that  we  are 
prone  to  regard  as  the  ends  of  all  our  endeavors  those  things 
which  are  merely  means  to  higher  ends.  We  hear  it  said  that 
the  end  for  which  we  are  working  in  agriculture  is  to  make 
farming  more  productive  and  more  profitable.  When  we  have 
attained  that  end,  however,  we  have  reached  only  a  way  station ; 
the  terminal  lies  beyond,  and  more  prosperous  farming  becomes 
the  means  to  enable  the  farmer  to  share  more  largely  in  the 
higher  enjoyments  of  civilization.  We  seek  better  farming 
that  we  may  have  better  farmers;  we  aspire  to  greater  material 
resources  that  we  may  add  to  the  abundance  of  human  resources. 
What  we  have  just  said  means  that  there  is  recognized  a  dis- 
tinction between  what  are  primarily  economic  considerations  and 
what  are  primarily  sociological  considerations. 

We  may  carry  the  discussion  a  step  further  in  the  hope  of 
making  our  point  a  little  clearer.  Economics  was  early  defined 
as  the  science  of  wealth.  Sociology  was  first  defined  as  the  sci- 
ence of  society.  Economics  takes  for  its  field  the  consideration 
of  the  effect  of  all  the  processes  on  the  production,  distribution, 
and  consumption  of  wealth.  Sociology  claims  as  its  province 
the  effect  of  all  the  processes  on  the  human  beings  themselves. 
This  is  a  rather  broad  distinction,  and  closer  analysis  will  show 
many  points  of  contact.  It  is  apparent  that  the  sociologist  and 
the  economist  must  both  deal  with  the  same  sorts  of  things,  but 
from  different  points  of  view.  Transportation  interests  the 
economist  because  of  its  bearing  on  the  economic  activities  of 
farming.  It  interests  the  sociologist  because  it  is  a  means  of 
communication,  of  social  intercourse,  of  promoting  the  asso- 
ciational  activities  of  the  people,  and  of  increasing  the  satisfac- 
tions of  life.  The  economist  may  be  interested  in  good  roads 
because  of  their  effect  on  land  values,  on  the  costs  of  production 
and  distribution,  or  on  the  type  of  farming  which  may  be  prac- 
ticed. The  sociologist  is  interested  in  good  roads  because  they 
determine  the  amount  of  concourse  of  a  neighborhood;  the 


612  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

friendly  visiting,  the  exchange  of  ideas,  the  discussion  of  com- 
munity affairs,  the  removal  of  isolation  and  the  promotion  of 
fellowship,  the  attendance  on  school  and  church  and  social  or- 
ganizations, the  accessibility  of  entertainments  and  recreational 
facilities. 

The  sociologist  thinks  of  people,  not  as  separate  individuals, 
but  in  their  group  activities  and  relationships — how  they  act  in 
the  presence  of  one  another  and  how  they  react  on  one  another ; 
what  brings  them  together  or  holds  them  apart ;  how  each  is 
molded  by  his  group ;  and  how  he  helps  to  mold  the  group ; 
what  is  the  motive  force  in  any  given  group  activity ;  how  strong 
that  force  is  and  how  it  may  be  directed. 

The  sociology  of  rural  life  is,  roughly,  then,  the  study  of  the 
associated  or  group  activities  of  the  people  who  live  in  the  coun- 
try viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  the  effect  of  those  activities 
on  the  character  of  the  farm  people  themselves.  It  recognizes 
as  the  final  term  in  the  whole  country -life  enterprise  the  farmer 
himself.  It  involves  the  consideration  of  the  means,  agencies, 
and  methods,  by  which  the  fanner  can  realize  in  himself  the 
best  there  is  in  human  experience.  Instead  of  subscribing  to 
the  doctrine  that  we  "raise  more  corn  to  feed  more  hogs  to 
buy  more  land  to  raise  more  corn"  in  endless  succession,  it  con- 
tends that  we  improve  our  farming  that  we  may  improve  each 
generation  of  farmers  in  endless  succession.  When  we  attain 
the  end  of  raising  corn  and  pork  and  potatoes  it  is  that  these 
may  become  the  means  for  developing  a  more  healthy,  contented, 
resourceful,  intelligent,  and  upstanding  farm  people.  Our  ulti- 
mate goal  is  a  progressively  finer  rural  manhood  and  womanhood, 
not  merely  a  greater  or  more  paying  output  of  farm  products. 
We  cannot  have  a  higher  rural  civilization  except  as  we  have 
advancement  in  the  material  resources  of  life.  We  are  under 
necessity  of  improving  agriculture  by  every  device  which  art  and 
science  can  discover  that  we  may  promote  human  well-being. 

Conditions  in  the  open  country  have  not  grown  any  worse 
since  we  began  talking  about  them.  It  is  when  thought  is  given 
to  how  conditions  may  be  improved  that  their  shortcomings  come 
to  light.  Rural  sociology,  if  we  may  use  that  term  for  tem- 
porary convenience,  takes  cognizance  of  all  of  these  shortcomings 


THE  FIELD  OF  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY  613 

and  seeks  to  discover  means  of  correcting  them  so  that  country 
folk  may  live  most  contentedly  and  wholesomely.  All  the  social 
handicaps  and  whatever  contributes  in  any  way  to  social  poverty 
comes  up  for  examination  to  see  why  it  exists,  on  what  it  rests, 
and  how  it  is  to  be  adjusted.  The  social  deficiencies  come  up 
prominently  for  attention.  But  the  student  of  rural  social 
conditions  is  as  much  concerned  with  promoting  the  prevailing, 
or  normal,  standards  into  progressively  higher  ones  as  he  is  in 
calling  attention  to  the  maladjustments  in  the  situation. 

The  present  widespread  interest  in  rural  conditions  grew  out 
of  the  discovery  that  certain  conditions  were  not  as  satisfactory 
as  they  ought  to  be  and  that  they  were  capable  of  being  improved. 
And  so  we  find  ourselves  following  the  normal  procedure  in  the 
correction  of  social  deficiencies,  namely,  by  first  calling  attention 
to  them,  stimulating  discussion,  creating  public  interest,  and 
crystallizing  public  sentiment  into  specific  measures  for  ameliora- 
tion. This  was  the  great  service  which  the  Commission  on  Coun- 
try Life,  of  which  former  Director  Bailey  was  the  chairman,  ren- 
dered to  the  country.  It  was  the  work  of  this  Commission  which 
stimulated  and  energized  the  latent  interest  in  the  social  welfare 
of  the  American  farm  people. 

Most  of  our  agricultural  teaching  is  an  application  of  the 
physical  and  natural  sciences  to  the  practical  problems  of  the 
farm.  In  this  newer  field  of  thought  having  to  do  with  social 
and  economic  conditions,  we  find  the  application  of  the  no  less 
important  social  sciences  to  the  affairs  of  the  farmer.  And  it  can 
be  said  with  truth  that  farmers  themselves  are  as  much  concerned 
with  the  general  social,  economic,  and  political  questions  of  the 
day  as  they  are  in  the  application  of  physical  and  biological 
science  to  the  business  of  tilling  the  soil. 

It  is  only  recently,  however,  that  much  attention  has  been 
given  to  rural  social  science  in  our  colleges  of  agriculture.  But 
the  interest  has  arisen  so  rapidly  since  the  Commission  on 
Country  Life  called  attention  to  the  importance  of  these  ques- 
tions that  now  sixty-four  per  cent,  of  the  separate  state  uni- 
versities teach  the  subject  in  some  form  and  under  one  title  or 
another.  This  new  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  agricultural  col- 
leges was  well  expressed  by  President  Benjamin  Ide  Wheeler  in 
an  address  before  the  Association  of  American  Agricultural 


614  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


Colleges  and  Experiment  Stations  at  Berkeley  last  August,  when 
he  said,  * '  Our  business  is  ultimately  a  sociological  business.  Con- 
siderations of  soil  technology  but  scratch  the  surface.  What  we 
are  busied  with  here  is  trying  to  find  out  how  to  adjust  this  soil 
to  the  use  of  families."  Or,  as  President  Butterfield  puts  it, 
"The  improved  acre  must  yield  not  only  corn  but  civilization, 
not  only  potatoes  but  culture,  not  only  wheat  but  effective  man- 
hood." 

In  barest  outline  this  describes  the  field  which  the  sociologist 
regards  as  his  province  and  indicates  the  general  character  of 
the  problems  which  the  student  of  the  sociology  of  rural  life 
finds  so  extremely  absorbing;  and  it  may  serve  to  answer  the 
editor's  question  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  subject.  The  study 
of  this  vast  field  has  scarcely  yet  been  entered  upon  and  its 
conquests  lie  ahead  of  us. 


THE  SCOPE  OF  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY1 

JOHN    M.    GILETTE 

RURAL  sociology,  by  reason  of  its  very  nature,  is  obliged  to 
regard  agricultural  phenomena  in  their  collective  bearing  or 
community  aspect.  All  social  phenomena  are  interesting  objects 
of  study  and  their  treatment  may  be  necessary  as  causal  foun- 
dations. But  those  which  relate  to  the  determination  of  progress, 
which  manifest  in  what  manner  the  estate  of  the  mass  of  men 
may  be  improved  and  how  a  more  balanced  functioning  of  society 
at  large  may  be  secured,  are  regarded  as  the  most  worthy  of 
attention. 

The  first  point  of  attack  concerns  rural  responses  to  physical 
conditions.  Variations  in  temperature,  soil,  and  precipitation 
are,  to  a  great  extent,  responsible  for  differentiating  the  United 
States  into  distinct  agricultural  regions  by  reason  of  the  differ- 
ences in  crop  responses.  Crop  responses,  in  turn,  largely  decide 
the  forms  of  agriculture,  stock-raising,  dairying,  large  and  small 
farming,  and  the  density  of  population.  Climatic  conditions, 

i  Adapted  from  American  Sociological  Society  Publications,  Vol.  XI, 
166-180,  1016. 


THE  FIELD  OF  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY  615 

the  crop  response,  the  forms  of  agriculture,  and  the  density 
of  population  are  strong  determinants  of  the  forms  and  extent 
of  sociability  and  the  amount  of  leisure.  Climatic  conditions 
and  crop  responses  are  also  influential  in  directing  the  flow 
of  immigration  and  the  establishment  of  immigrant  communities. 
While  not  immediately  responsible  for  what  rural  life  becomes, 
geographic  factors  have  a  large  share  in  shaping  them  and  are 
the  ultimate  conditioning  factors. 

Perhaps  the  second  center  of  consideration  is  that  of  popula- 
tion. The  amount  of  the  national,  as  well  as  of  the  rural,  pop- 
ulation is  determined  by  the  land.  The  density  of  the  popula- 
tion rests  on  access  to  the  land  and  involves  attention  to  land 
ownership.  The  problem  of  tenancy  may  be  considered  here  or 
under  production.  National  and  race  elements  in  the  population 
are  significant  for  unity,  cooperation,  and  progress.  Distribu- 
tion and  density  give  rise  to  problems  of  isolation  and  coopera- 
tion. Gains  and  losses  of  population  may  denote  a  healthy  or 
a  morbid  state  and  have  import  for  nation  and  locality.  Atten- 
tion to  the  amount  and  causes  of  losses  is  imperative.  Rates 
of  natural  increase  of  rural  inhabitants  are  symptomatic  of 
physical  and  social  conditions.  Proportions  of  age  and  sex 
hint  at  the  productive  efficiency  and  the  marital  state  of  rural 
peoples. 

A  third  center  of  interest  is  that  of  production,  production  in 
the  economic  sense.  Rural  sociology  is  interested  in  certain 
phases  of  production  only  as  they  condition  the  various  funda- 
mental activities  of  rural  communities.  It  does  not  regard  wealth 
production  as  an  end  in  itself,  but  as  an  essential  foundation  of  a 
larger  existence.  Hence,  it  must  inquire  in  what  way  such  fac- 
tors as  the  following  have  a  determining  influence  among  rural 
populations:  per  capita  and  per  family  production;  extensive 
and  intensive  farming;  capitalistic  or  large  farming  versus 
farming  by  small  owners;  farm  ownership;  farm  tenancy;  con- 
ditions of  labor  •.  marketing ;  rural  credit.  Closely  related  topics 
are  taxation,  the  various  forms  of  insurance,  including  accident 
insurance,  and  savings-account  systems.  The  possibility  of 
securing  a  better  adjustment  relative  to  many  of  these  factors 
is  worthy  of  study. 

A  fourth  point  of  attack  is  communication.     Roads,  systems 


616  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

of  road  construction,  local,  state,  and  national  systems  of  reg- 
ulation, rural  mail  delivery,  telephones,  rural  parcel  post,  inter- 
urban  lines,  automobiles,  every  means  by  which  social  activities 
are  transacted  and  furthered,  demand  attention  in  the  ratio 
of  their  importance.  The  creation  of  means  of  communication 
appears  to  lie  near  the  heart  of  the  evolution  of  society.  Good 
roads  and  quickened  transit  may  introduce  a  new  rural  society. 
But  there  is  also  a  reverse  side  to  the  shield  which  must  be  re- 
garded. With  their  power  to  quicken  the  community  pulse, 
these  agencies  likewise  possess  a  tremendous  thrusting  power 
toward  urban  life.  It  is  conceivable  that  some  sort  of  derural- 
ization  may  be  the  outcome  of  improved  communication. 

A  fifth  center  of  interest  is  that  of  health.  I  do  not  stop  to 
argue  that  rural  health  conditions  have  social  import.  That  is 
conceded.  These  questions  arise :  How  does  health  in  the  country 
where  the  facts  are  not  so  well  known  compare  with  that  in  the 
city  where  the  facts  are  better  known?  To  what  unsanitary 
conditions  are  rural  diseases  due  ?  What  are  effective  and  valid 
remedial  measures?  What  devices  and  agencies  are  best  adapted 
to  reach  the  rural  mind,  respecting  health  and  sanitation? 

A  sixth  important  consideration  concerns  neighborhood  insti- 
tutions and  organizations.  Perhaps  the  rural  home  and  the 
family  demand  more  attention  than  we  have  accorded  them.  The 
domestic  institution  in  the  country  has  its  own  peculiar  prob- 
lems. Some  of  the  domestic  concerns  needing  investigation 
and  discussion  are :  the  family  system  of  control,  whether  patri- 
archal or  modern ;  the  home  atmosphere  and  facilities  for  home 
satisfactions;  woman's  work,  hours  of  labor,  and  the  facilities 
for  carrying  on  the  work ;  her  leisure  and  opportunities  for 
recreation,  association,  and  culture;  rural  child  labor,  perhaps 
the  largest  aspect  of  national  child  labor;  the  ethical  basis  of 
the  participation  of  women  and  children  in  the  agricultural 
process ;  educational,  recreational,  and  associational  facilities  and 
privileges  of  country  children. 

The  various  neighborhood  institutions  and  organizations  of 
the  country,  as  the  community  framework  and  the  agencies  of 
prosecuting  the  essential  activities,  deserve  careful  study.  Those 
organizations  which  deal  with  economic  production  exclusively 
should  be  considered  under  production  to  the  degree  that  they 


THE  FIELD  OF  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY  617 

are  seen  to  influence  activities  generally.  Their  social  phases 
as  such  may  find  a  place  here  at  discretion.  Relative  to  the 
institutions  of  long  standing,  the  church  and  the  school,  we  must 
inquire  relative  to  each :  Is  it  an  efficient  institution,  when  judged 
in  the  light  of  the  community  function  it  should  perform? 
This  supposes  that  we  know  what  each  of  these  agencies  should 
accomplish.  We  apprehend  this  to  the  degree  that  we  have 
arrived  at  a  competent  judgment  as  to  the  demands  society  at 
large  and  the  local  community  make  upon  them.  Upon  the  basis 
of  this  judgment,  the  investigator  may  proceed  to  formulate  a 
program  for  school  and  church,  which,  if  executed,  will  trans- 
form them  into  more  serviceable  agencies  of  community  life. 

Certain  notable  agencies  and  organizations  have  appeared  in 
the  rural  affairs  of  our  nation  during  relatively  recent  years. 
In  the  list  may  be  mentioned  granges,  unions,  societies  of  equity, 
cooperative  buying  and  marketing  organizations,  institutes, 
farmers'  clubs,  non-partisan  leagues,  and  recreation  associations. 
The  function  of  the  rural  sociologist  is  to  evaluate  their  useful- 
ness for  social  progress,  to  denote  their  limitations,  to  suggest 
needed  modifications  and  how  greater  efficiency  may  be  secured. 
It  is  also  his  function  to  make  an  inventory  of  the  social  resources 
of  country  communities  and  to  reveal  how  the  social  capital  may 
be  increased. 

A  seventh  significant  line  of  study  is  the  pathological  social 
conditions  of  country  life.  The  phrase  is  objectionable,  but  it 
covers  important  facts,  such  as  poverty,  pauperism,  insanity, 
feeble-mindedness,  and  criminality.  "While  in  some  particulars 
the  country  appears  to  better  advantage  than  urban  groups,  in  no 
case  is  it  within  the  limit  of  complete  safety.  Rural  populations 
are  exceedingly  behindhand  in  giving  serious  attention  to  the 
scientific  and  preventive  methods  of  handling  these  menacing 
phenomena.  As  in  many  other  fields  of  investigation  and  study 
of  rural  conditions,  there  is  a  dearth  of  reliable  information  rel- 
ative to  the  frequency  of  occurrence  and  the  provocative  factors 
of  these  features.  Real  statesmanlike  insight  into  devising  appro- 
priate and  effective  laws  and  instruments  for  exercising  a  safe 
control  and  the  gradual  reduction  or  complete  elimination  of  these 
backward  classes  is  sorely  demanded.  Extreme  pauperism  may 
be  infrequent,  the  social  evil  as  a  local  institution  may  scarcely 


618  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

exist,  and  all  the  insane  may  have  been  placed  in  hospitals ;  but  a 
sane  method  of  dealing  with  juvenile  delinquency  and  of  reaching 
the  multitudes  of  epileptics  and  feeble-minded  scattered  among 
rural  populations  who  are  menacing  the  future  by  unrestricted 
procreation  are  among  the  most  pressing  imperatives. 

An  eighth  center  of  interest  is  the  psychology  of  the  rural 
social  mind.  As  a  scientific  curio  the  rural  mind  may  be  inter- 
esting to  the  highest  degree.  But  its  scientific  understanding  is 
more  worthy  because  any  approach  to  rural  betterment  and 
progress  must  be  founded  upon  it.  The  psychological  interpre- 
tation of  that  great  urbanward  movement,  which  sweeps  from 
300,000  to  400,000  persons  a  year  from  country  to  city,  should 
prove  most  significant  and  fruitful.  It  'is  desirable  also  that 
the  rural  mind  be  studied  to  discover  its  avenues  of  appeal,  for 
all  steps  in  rural  progress  are  conditioned  by  an  educational  pro- 
gram of  presentation  and  discussion.  In  order  that  rural  ad- 
vance shall  take  place,  it  is  likewise  requisite  that  the  social 
mind  of  the  country  neighborhoods  be  inoculated  with  the  germs 
of  aspiration  and  expectation  of  better  things.  The  means  and 
methods  of  reaching  the  rural  intelligence  which  are  specifically 
adapted  to  its  characteristics  must  be  discovered  and  developed. 

The  ninth  group  of  considerations  deal  with  semi-rural  and 
town-country  communities  and  their  problems.  The  situation  in 
towns  and  villages  of  less  than  2,500  inhabitants,  such  groups 
of  population  being  usually  included  with  rural  groups,  is  de- 
cidedly distinct  from  that  prevailing  in  the  open  country.  A 
study  of  conditions  peculiar  to  these  groups,  the  deficits  existing, 
the  effect  of  these  on  the  developing  youth,  especially,  and  their 
correctives  would  appear  to  be  worthy  of  the  highest  consid- 
eration. The  town-country  communities,  the  small  town  together 
with  its  surrounding  agricultural  district,  present  some  specially 
interesting  problems.  There  needs  to  be  attention  given  to  the 
possibility  and  methods  of  developing  a  larger  and  more  vital 
cooperation  between  the  two  sides  of  such  neighborhoods. 

Tenth,  some  attention  should  be  devoted  to  the  relation  of 
country  to  city.  Since  the  influence  of  country  upon  city  appears 
to  be  directly  less  than  that  of  city  upon  country,  it  is  appropriate 
for  the  rural  sociologist  to  draw  this  group  of  considerations 
within  his  survey.  The  characteristic  differences  between  the 


THE  FIELD  OF  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY  619 

two  types  of  community,  their  advantages  and  disadvantages  for 
purposes  of  complete  living,  and  their  reactions  upon  each  other 
would  constitute  some  of  the  germane  and  more  important  in- 
quiries. 

Eleventh,  it  will  probably  be  agreed  that  instruction  in  rural 
sociology  should  include  matters  pertinent  to  making  investiga- 
tions and  surveys.  If  any  advance  is  to  take  place  among  agri- 
cultural peoples  there  must  first  occur  an  adequate  inventory  of 
conditions  obtaining  among  such  populations.  It  is  quite  un- 
reasonable to  expect  development  along  right  lines  without  ad- 
equate knowledge.  The  training  and  equipment  of  a  leadership 
which  is  able  to  rise  to  the  importance  of  its  task  is  a  part  of 
the  function  to  be  exercised  by  departments  and  courses  which 
deal  with  the  social  situation.  In  the  preparation  of  such  a 
leadership  what  could  prove  more  provocative  of  ultimate  ad- 
vance in  rural  life  than  a  development  of  the  ability  to  inves- 
tigate, to  survey,  and  to  interpret  the  results  with  a  view  to 
securing  the  introduction  of  an  improved  social  system? 


THE  TEACHING  OF  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY: 
PARTICULARLY  IN  THE  LAND- 
GRANT  COLLEGES  AND 
UNIVERSITIES  1 

DWIGHT   SANDERSON 

THE  late  professor  C.  R.  Henderson  seems  to  have  been  the 
first  to  offer  a  course  on  rural  social  life  in  this  country.  In 
the  announcements  of  the  Department  of  Sociology  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Chicago  for  1894-95  there  appeared : 

"31.  Social  Conditions  in  American  Rural  Life.  Some  problems  of 
amelioration,  presented  by  life  on  American  farms  and  in  villages  will  be 
considered.  M.  First  Term.  Winter  Q.  Associate  Professor  Henderson." 

The  Quarterly  Calendar  (Vol.  III.  No.  4)  shows  that  sixteen 
students  were  registered  in  the  first  class.  From  that  time 
until  two  or  three  years  before  his  death,  Professor  Henderson 

i  Adapted  from  American  Sociological  Society  Publications,  Vol.  XI,  181- 
208,  19 10. 


620  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 


gave  the  course  almost  every  summer,  though  the  name  was 
changed  to  " Rural  Communities." 

...  In  the  fall  of  1902  Kenyon  L.  Butterfield  was  made 
instructor  in  rural  sociology  at  the  University  of  Michigan  and 
gave  his  first  course  in  that  subject.  In  1903  Mr.  Butterfield 
called  attention  to  the  importance  of  the  study  of  the  social 
sciences  by  agricultural  students  in  an  article  entitled  "An 
Untilled  Field  in  American  Agricultural  Education,"  in  which 
he  defined  rural  social  science  and  outlined  its  content.  In  1904 
as  president  of  the  Rhode  Island  College  of  Agriculture  and 
Mechanic  Arts  he  gave  the  first  course  in  rural  sociology  given 
in  any  of  the  land-grant  colleges. 

....  Among  the  replies  received,  35  have  stated  definitely  when 
the  course  was  first  given  at  that  institution.  By  years,  they 
may  be  summarized  as  follows:  1894-5,  Univ.  Chicago;  1902, 
Univ.  Michigan ;  1904-5,  R.  I.  College,  and  Cornell  Univ. ;  1906-7, 
Univ.  Missouri  and  Mass.  Agr.  College ;  1908-9,  Univ.  No.  Dakota ; 
1910-11,  2  institutions;  1911-12,  2;  1912-13,  4;  1913-14,  5; 
1914-15,  8;  1915-16,  5;  1916-17,  2  (announced).  It  seems  safe 
to  infer  that  probably  not  over  a  dozen  institutions  were  teach- 
ing rural  sociology  prior  to  1910,  and  that  fully  half  of  those 
now  offering  courses  have  established  them  within  the  last  three 
years. 

Sixty-four  per  cent,  of  the  48  land-grant  colleges;  45  per 
cent,  of  the  20  state  universities — separate  from  land-grant 
colleges;  32  per  cent,  of  the  91  normal  schools  and  9  per 
cent,  of  300  other  colleges  arid  universities;  or  21  per  cent, 
of  the  total  459  institutions  examined  are  teaching  rural 
sociology.  It  is  obvious  that  in  sparsely  settled  states  like 
Arizona,  Montana,  and  New  Mexico,  there  should  be  but  little 
demand  for  this  subject,  but  it  seems  odd  that  agricultural  states 
like  Nebraska  and  South  Carolina  should  not  have  a  single  insti- 
tution teaching  this  subject.  It  is  also  interesting  to  note  that 
the  subject  finds  but  little  appreciation  in  the  curricula  of  eastern 
institutions.  Thus  of  the  148  institutions  in  the  fifteen  states 
of  the  Atlantic  seaboard  but  20,  or  13  per  cent.,  gave  in- 
struction in  rural  sociology  and  seventeen  of  these  were  land- 
grant  colleges,  for  of  the  ninety-five  private  colleges  and  uni- 
versities in  these  states  only  three,  Harvard  University  (and 


THE  FIELD  OF  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY  621 

Radcliffe  College),  Syracuse  University,  and  Adelphi  College 
give  courses. 


DEFINITIONS— RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 1 

"RURAL  sociology  is  the  study  of  the  forces  and  conditions  of 
rural  life  as  a  basis  for  constructive  action  in  developing  and 
maintaining  a  scientifically  efficient  civilization  in  the  country." 
—PAUL  L.  VOGT,  Department  of  Church  and  Country  Life,  M.  E. 
Church. 

"Rural  sociology  is  a  study  of  the  social  forces  and  factors 
operating  in  rural  life  with  a  view  to  its  more  adequate  organ- 
ization."— JOHN  PHELAN,  Massachusetts  Agricultural  College. 

"The  study  of  the  forces  and  activities — institutional  and  non- 
institutional — which  are  concerned  with  the  evolution,  organ- 
ization, and  improvement  of  rural  life." — L.  L.  BERNARD,  Uni- 
versity of  Minnesota. 

"Rural  sociology  is  concerned  with  the  evolution,  present 
status,  and  suggested  betterment  of  rural  social  institutions." — 
A.  S.  HARDING,  South  Dakota  Agricultural  College. 

* '  Rural  sociology  is  a  study  of  men  living  together  in  the 
country,  and  of  the  forces  and  factors  which  are  acted  upon 
by  men  and  which  react  upon  them  in  their  reaction  with  one 
another." — GEORGE  H.  VONTUNGELN,  Iowa  State  College. 

"Rural  sociology  is  a  science  of  the  reciprocal  relations  of 
human  beings  living  in  rural  communities.  It  also  considers 
the  reciprocal  relations  of  rural  and  urban  communities." — 
ERNEST  BURNHAM,  Western  State  Normal  School,  Kalamazoo, 
Mich. 

"A  study  of  institutions  and  groups  of  community  life  in  the 
open  country." — E.  L.  HOLTON,  Kansas  Agricultural  College. 

"A  study  of  group  actions  and  reactions  of  human  nature 
under  country  conditions." — E.  C.  BRANSON,  University  of  North 
Carolina. 

"In  general,  it  is  applied  sociology;  specifically,  a  study  of 

i  From  Sanderson,  "The  Teaching  of  Rural  Sociology :  Particularly  in 
the  land-grant  colleges  and  universities,"  Publications  of  the  American 
Sociological  Society,  Vol.  XI,  192-194. 


622  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY 

rural  conditions  in  the  light  of  knowledge  of  society  with  a  view 
to  discovering  and  suggesting  ways  of  improving  them." — 
NEWELL  SIMS,  University  of  Florida. 

"Exposition  of  the  social  problems  of  rural  life  with  sug- 
gestions for  home  and  neighborhood  amelioration." — G.  CORAY, 
University  of  Utah. 

"Rural  sociology  is,  therefore,  concerned  with  the  way  in  which 
farm  people  live  together  in  their  neighborhoods  and  as  a 
class.  It  has  to  do  with  the  reactions  of  human  character  under 
rural  environment.  It  includes  a  description  of  the  associated 
efforts  that  minister  to  the  common  desires,  needs  and  purposes 
of  farm  folk.  It  covers  the  problem  of  'better  living/  of 
'country  life'  as  a  whole.  It  emphasizes  the  large  needs  and 
methods  of  the  common  life  of  rural  people.  It  involves  the 
question  of  the  permanence  of  a  satisfactory  rural  civilization 
and  of  the  social  agencies  or  institutions,  necessary  to  such  a 
civilization." — KENYON  L.  BUTTERFIELD,  Massachusetts  Agricul- 
tural College. 

"The  sociology  of  rural  life  is,  roughly,  then,  the  study  of 
the  associated  or  group  activities  of  the  people  who  live  in  the 
country  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  the  effect  cf  those  activ- 
ities on.  the  character  of  the  farm  people  themselves.  It  recog- 
nizes as  the  final  term  in  the  whole  country-life  enterprise  the 
farmer  himself.  It  involves  the  consideration  of  the  means, 
agencies  and  methods  by  which  the  farmer  can  realize  in  himself 
the  best  there  is  in  human  experience." — A.  R.  MANN,  Cornell 
University. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Bibliography  of  Rural  Sociology.  Department  of  Sociology,  Durham, 
N.  H.,  New  Hampshire  College  of  Agriculture  and  the  Mechanic 
Arts,  1914. 

Country  Life.     Annals.     Vol.  40,  March,  1912. 

Fleischer,  H.  W.  Essential  Factors  of  Rural  Sociology.  Purdue  Agri- 
culturist, 11 : 14-16,  January,  1917. 

Gillette,  John  M.  Constructive  Rural  Sociology.  Sturgis,  N.  Y.,  1912. 
The  Scope  and  Methods  of  Instruction  in  Rural  Sociology.  Proceed- 
ings of  Amer.  Sociological  Society,  11 : 163-180,  Univ.  of  Chicago 
Press,  1917. 

Groves,  Ernest  R.  The  Social  Value  of  Rural  Experience.  In  his 
Rural  Problems  of  To-day,  Chap.  6,  pp.  89-102,  Assn.  Press.,  N. 
Y.,  1918. 


THE  FIELD  OF  RURAL  SOCIOLOGY  623 

Holt,  Arthur  E.  Outline  Study  in  Christianity  and  Rural  Life  Prob- 
lems. Social  Service  Department,  Congregational  Church,  Bos- 
ton, Mass. 

Phelan,  John.  Elements  of  Rural  Sociology  and  Rural  Economics. 
(Revised  edition.)  Eau  Claire  Book  Co.,  Eau  Claire,  Wis.,  1913. 

Sanderson,  Dwight  L.  The  Teaching  of  Rural  Sociology:  Partic- 
ularly in  the  Land-Grant  Colleges  and  Universities.  Proceedings 
of  American  Sociological  Society,  11 : 181-208,  1916. 

Smart,  Thomas  J.  Training  a  Socialized  Rural  Leadership.  Amer. 
Journal  Sociology,  pp.  389-411,  Jan.,  1919. 

Sociology  of  Rural  Life.  Publications  of  American  Sociological  So- 
ciety. Volume  XI.  Chicago,  111.,  University  of  Chicago  Press, 
1916. 

Vogt,  Paul  L.  Introduction  to  Rural  Sociology.  Appleton,  N.  Y., 
1917. 

Woods,  A.  F.  Agricultural  Education  in  Its  Relation  to  Rural  So- 
ciology. American  Journal  Sociology,  17 :  657-68,  March,  1912. 

Woodsworth,  J.  S.  Studies  in  Rural  Life  Citizenship.  Secretary 
Canadian  Council  of  Agriculture,  Winnipeg,  Canada. 


INDEX 


Abandoned  Farms,  19,  23,  300. 

Adams  Act,  386. 

Agriculture:  achievements  necessary 
to  develop  in  America,  108-110; 
after  the  war,  24 ;  decline  of  in 
New  England,  16,  20;  need  of 
a  national  policy  toward,  95- 
114;  in  rural  school  curriculum, 
352-356. 

Agriculture,  correctional:  Chap.  XI, 
283-303;  bibliography,  311-312; 
for  epileptics,  290-295;  for  the 
insane,  295-296;  juvenile  delin 
quency,  297-303;  prison  farms, 
283-290. 

Aristocracy,  agrarian,  145-146. 

Art,  rural,  248. 

Arvold,  Alfred  G. 

Drama    for    Rural    Communities, 
236-240. 

Automobile,  effect  on  farm  life,  273- 
274. 

Bailey,  L.  H. 

A    Point   of   View   on    the   Labor 

Problem,  152-154. 
Boys'  and  Girls'  Contest  Clubs,  391- 

394. 
Housing  Conditions  on  Farms  in 

New  York  State,  331-333. 
Rural  Leadership,  584. 
The  Survey  Idea  in  Country  Life 

Work,  478-^81. 
Baker,  George  P. 

What    the    Pageant    Can    Do    for 

the  Town,  243-248. 
Baker,  Ray  Stannard. 

The  Spirit  of  the  Pioneer,  34-35. 
The  Great  Southwest,  36-38. 
Following  the  Color  Line,  69-72. 
Bashore,  Harvey. 

Overcrowding  and  Defective  Hous- 
ing, 329-331. 


Bernard,  L.  L. 

A    Sociologist's    Health    Program 
for  a   Rural   Community,    185- 
193. 
Rehabilitating  the  Rural  School, 

340-345. 
Betts,  Geo.  H.  and  Hall,  Otis  E. 

The  Rural  High  School,  348-350. 
Bidwell,  Percy  Wells. 

Intemperance    in    Colonial    Days, 

13-16. 
Boardman,  John  R. 

The  Sources  of  Leadership,  587- 

589. 
Bolton,  Ethel  Stanwood. 

Country    Life    in    New    England, 

1-13. 
Boult,  Ella  M. 

The    Miracle    Play    at    Pomfret, 

Conn.,  241-243. 

Boys     .ind     Girls     Clubs,     382-383, 
391-394;      535;      Bibliography, 
408. 
Brand,  Charles  J. 

Work    of    Office    of    Markets    and 

Rural  Organization,  515-516. 
Branson,  E.  C. 

Our  Carolina  Highlanders,  58-65. 
Bremer,  Harry  H. 

Strawberry  Pickers  of  Maryland, 

157. 

Bruce,  Philip  A. 
.     Social  Conditions  of  the  Old  and 

New  South,  46-58. 
Bryce,  James. 

Characteristics    of     the    Farmer, 

162-164. 
The  Passing  of  the  Frontier,  35- 

36. 

The  Secret  of  Influence,  584-585. 
Burnham,  Ernest. 

The  Status  of  the  Rural  School, 
337-340. 


625 


626 


INDEX 


Butterfield,  Kenyon  L. 

Agriculture  in  New  England,  20- 

25. 
A  Point  of  View  in  Comparisons 

of  City  and  Country  Conditions, 

111-114. 
Farmers'     Social     Organizations, 

536-540. 
Need  of  Ideals  in  Rural  Life,  181- 

183. 
Report  of  Committee  on  Country 

Church    Function,    Policy    and 

Program,  444-452. 
Rural  Organization,  500-512. 
The  Call  of  the  Country  Parish, 

442-443. 

Cameron,  Agnes  Dean. 

Canada's  Royal  Northwest  Mount- 
ed Police,' 310-311. 
Cance,  Alexander  E. 

Farmer's   Cooperative  Exchanges, 

120-131. 

Carolina  Highlanders.  58-65. 
Carver,  T.  N. 

An  Appreciation  of  Rural  People, 

165-168. 

Life  in  the  Corn  Belt,  38-44. 
Rural   Economy   a»  a    Factor    in 
the  Success  of  the  Church,  426- 
430. 
The  Moral  Basis  of  Cooperation, 

119-120. 
What  Awaits  Rural  New  England, 

16-19. 

Chautauqua,  bibliography,  407-408. 
Child  labor,  rural,  155-159. 
Children:     healthier    in    city    than 
country,    193-197;    influence   of 
farm   Jife  upon,    164-165,    166- 
167,  300;  treatment  of  by  farm? 
ers,  301. 

Church,  country:  Chap.  XV,  411- 
454;  bibliography,  452-454;  and 
land  tenure,  421-426;  decadent, 
268;  report  of  committee  on 
function,  policy  and  program 
for,  444-452 ;  rural  economy  a 
factor  in  success  of,  426-430; 
sectarianism  in,  443^-444;  situ- 
ation in  Ohio,  431-435;  ten 
years  work  in,  411-421;  type 


of  workers  needed  for,  442-443 ; 
Wisconsin   parish,   435-437. 
City    drift,    mental    causes    behind, 

*  172-175. 
Claghorn,  Kate  Holladay. 

Juvenile     Delinquency     in     Rural 

New  York,  297-303. 
Clopper,  Dr.  E.  N. 

Colorado   Beet   Workers,    156. 
Coates,  T.  J. 

An  Epigram  on  the  Rural  School, 

337. 

Communication  and  transportation : 
Chap.  X,  255-281;  bibliography, 
281 ;    agricultural    press,    auto- 
mobile, 273-274;  circulating  li- 
brary, 274,  mail  delivery,  274; 
other  aids,  266-274 ;  roads,  255- 
266;  telephone,  280. 
Community      center :      consolidated 
school,  371-374;  church  as,  414- 
420;    church    parish,    435-437; 
undesirable,  301-303. 
Community  fair,  402-406. 
Community,  rural:  defined,  576;  or- 
ganization of,  507-576. 
Conveniences    for    farm    home,    101. 
Cook,  John  H. 

The    Consolidated    School    As    a 

Community  Center,  371-374. 
Cooley,  Charles  R. 

Leadership    or    Personal    Ascend- 
ency, 581-583. 
Cooley,  Harris  R. 

The  Outdoor  Treatment  of  Crime, 

283-288. 

Cooperation:   129-137;  bibliography, 
160;    farmers'    cooperative    ex- 
changes,   120-131;    fostered    by 
farmers'    clubs,    544-545,    552; 
in     European     countries,     122; 
moral  basis  of,  119-120;   social 
effects  of  in  Europe,  131-137. 
Corn  Belt,  life  in,  38-44. 
Correctional  agriculture:  Chap.  XI, 
283-303;      bibliography,      311- 
312. 
Coulter,  John  Lee. 

Immigration  as  a  Source  of  Farm 

Laborers,  88-93. 

Country  life:  in  New  England,  Chap. 
I,  1-26 ;  in  the  south,  Chap.  Ill, 


INDEX 


627 


46-74;    in  the  west,   Chap.   II, 

27-45. 

Country  school,  see  School. 
Country   store,   as   source   of   social 

ideals,  302. 
County  agent,  380. 
Crime,   outdoor   treatment  of,   283- 

295;  and  feeble-mindedness,  211. 
Curriculum,   for  moonlight  schools, 

362;    rural   school,  341-345. 
Curtis,  Henry  S. 

Need  of  Play  in  Rural  Life,  226- 

228. 

Danielson,  Florence  H.  and  Daven- 
port, Chas.  B. 
The  Hill  Folk,  206-213. 
Davenport,  Eugene. 

Wanted :     A   National    Policy    in 

Agriculture,  95-114. 
Delinquency,  juvenile,  297-303. 
Death    rate,    higher    in    urban    dis- 
tricts, 151. 
Dewey,  Evelyn. 

Agriculture  and  the  Curriculum, 

352-356. 
Domestic  manufactures,  in  colonial 

days,  8-9. 
Douglass,  Harlan  Paul. 

The  Town's  Moral  Plan,  467-471. 
Drama,  rural,  236-248. 
Dudgeon,  M.  S. 

The  Rural  Book  Hunger,  394-401. 

Economic  interests:  Chap.  VI,  119- 
137;  bibliography,  160-161; 
adult  labor,  147-155;  child  la- 
bor, 155-159;  cooperation,  119- 
137;  ownership  and  tenancy, 
137-147. 

Educational  agencies:  Chapter  XIV, 
377-410;  bibliography,  407- 
410;  boys'  and  girls'  clubs,  382- 
384,  391-394;  community  fair, 
402-406 ;  farm  demonstration, 
377-382;  home  economics  ex- 
tension work,  389-391;  travel- 
ing libraries,  394-401 ;  work  un- 
der Smith-Hughes  Act,  407. 

Elliot,  Chas.  W. 

The    Influence    of    Farm    Life    on 
Childhood,  164-16.). 


Emerick,  E.  J. 

Feeble-mindedness  Denned,  203- 

204. 

Epileptics,  farm  care  of,  290-293. 
Fairohild,  H.  P. 

Why    Immigrants    go    to    Cities, 

85-88. 


Fairs,  community,  402-406,  bibli- 
ography, 409. 

Family,  farm:  in  corn  belt,  39-40; 
size  of,  332. 

Farm  bureau,  384,  518-536;  bibli- 
ography, 409. 

Farmer:  characteristics  of,  162- 
164,  165-168;  mind  of,  175- 
181,  269. 

Farm  income,  102-103,  108. 

Farm  life,  educational  value  of, 
164-167,  170-172. 

Farm  village,  271-273. 

Farmers'  clubs:  advantages  of, 
541-545;  how  to  organize,  545- 
552. 

Farmers'  cooperative  exchanges, 
120-131. 

Farmers'  organizations:  clubs,  541- 
552;  Grange,  552-555;  Non- 
Partisan  League,  557-567;  so- 
cial, 536-540. 

Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Edu- 
cation, 407. 

Feeble-mindedness:  and  crime,  211; 
denned,  203-204;  extent  of  in 
New  Hampshire,  213-214;  in 
Pennsylvania,  214-217,  in  rural 
England,  217;  fundamental 
facts  regarding,  204-205;  in- 
vestigation of  two  family  trees, 
206-213;  prevention  of,  219- 
223;  segregation,  221. 

Fernald,  Walter  E. 
What  is  Practicable  in  the  Way  of 
Prevention    of    Mental    Defect, 
219-223. 

Ferris,  Elmer  E. 

A  Land  of  Law  and  Order,  306- 
307. 

Field,  Jessie. 

County    Work   of    Y.    W.    C.    A., 
440-441. 


628 


INDEX 


Fiske,  G.  Walter. 

The  Development  of  Rural  Lead- 
ership,  589-601. 
The  Social  Value  of  the  Telephone, 

280-281. 
Foght,  Harold  W. 

The    Change    from    Amateur    to 
Professional  Teaching,  347-348. 
Forbes,  Elmer  S. 

Rural  Housing,  327-329. 
Free  delivery,  rural  mail,  273-274. 
Frontier:    passing    of,    35-36;    sig- 
nificance  of    in    American    his- 
tory,  29-34. 

Galpin,  C.  J. 

A  Method  of  Making  a  Social  Sur- 
vey of  a  Rural  Community, 
484-490. 

Social  Privileges  of  a  Village  or 
Small  City,  464-467. 

The  Social  Anatomy  of  an  Agri- 
cultural   Community,    490-497. 
Gill,  Charles  O. 

Social  Effects  of  Cooperation  in 
Europe,  131-137. 

The    Church    Situation    in    Ohio, 

431-435. 
Gillette,  John  M. 

Mitigating  Rural  Isolation,  266- 
274. 

Rural  Child  Labor,   155-156. 

Tenant   Farming,    137-142. 

The  Scope  of  Rural  Sociology, 
615-620. 

Training    for    Rural    Leadership, 

585-587. 

Grange,  see  Patrons  of  Husbandry. 
Great  men,  from  rural  environment, 

168-172. 
Groves,  Ernest  R. 

Suggestion  and  City-drift,  172- 
175, 

The  Mind  of  the  Farmer,  175- 
181. 


Hatch  Act,  386. 
Hayes,  E.  C. 

Agrarian    Aristocracy   and   Popu- 
lation Pressure.  145-147. 

Leadership,  583. 


Health,  physical:  Chap.  VIII,  185- 
202;  bibliography,  223-224;  for 
rural  community,  185-193;  for 
rural  schools,  195-196;  inspec- 
tion, 188;  lack  of  information 
and  aids,  186-187;  legislation, 
188-189;  on  prison  farms,  289- 
290;  teaching  of,  191-192; 
work  in  schools  of  U.  S.,  197. 

Health,  mental,  203-225;  bibliogra- 
phy, 225. 

Hedrick,  W.  O. 

Some  Advantages  of  Tenancy,  142- 
144. 

Henderson,  Charles  R. 
Rural  Police,  303-306. 

Hill,  Laurence  S. 

Physical      Education      in      Rural 
Schools,  229-235. 

Hine,  Lewis  H. 

Children  or  Cotton,  158-159. 

Home  demonstration,   535. 

Home  economics,  under  Smith- 
Lever  Act,  389-391. 

Home,  rural:  Chap.  XII,  313-326; 
bibliography,  334-335 ;  chang- 
ing, 316-317,  324-326;  conveni- 
ences in,  333. 

Homer,  Wm.  J. 

The  Prison  Farm,  289 

Hospital,  rural,  190-191. 

Housing,  rural:  Chap  XII,  327-333; 
bibliography,  335-336;  in  New 
York  State,  331-333;  over- 
crowded and  defective,  329-331. 

Hunter,  W.  H. 

Why    League    ( Non-Partisan)     is 
Opposed,  564-567. 

Ideals,  in  rural  life,  181-182. 
Illiteracy:   among  mountain  whites, 

61 ;    war   against   in   Kentucky, 

360-363. 
Immigrants,    in   agriculture:    Chap. 

IV,  75-94;  bibliography,  93-94; 

as  source  of  farm  laborers,  88- 

93;  migration  to  cities,  86-88. 
Insanity:  farming  as  cure  for,  295^ 

297;  urban  and  rural,  218-219. 
Intemperance:  in  colonial  days,  13- 

16;   effect  of  cooperation  upon, 

133. 


INDEX 


629 


Irrigation :  influence  on  community 
spirit,  36;  on  character  of 
farmer,  37. 

Isolation :  cause  of  delinquency, 
108;  conditions  which  account 
for,  267 ;  degree  of,  267-269 ;  ef- 
fects of,  279-270;  influence  on 
mind  of  farmer,  177-179;  miti- 
gating, 266-274;  physical  ef- 
fects of,  192;  solutions  and 
panaceas,  271-274. 

Jenkins,  W.  H. 

The  Farm  Playground,  236. 

Kellogg,  Paul  U. 

Five  Principles  of  Surveys,  481- 

484. 
Key,  Dr.  Wilhelmine  E. 

Feeble-minded    Citizens    in    Penn- 
sylvania, 214-217. 
Knapp,  Bradford. 

Education  through  Farm  Demon- 
stration, 377-382. 

Kuapp,  Seaman  A  ,  life  work,  377- 
385,    601-603;    Ten    Command- 
ments of  Agriculture,  380-381. 
Kremer,  Kev.  A.  Ph. 

The     Genoa     Parish,     Walworth 
County,  435-437. 

Labor,  adult:  147-155;  bibliogra- 
phy, 161;  decreasing  amount  of 
151;  effect  of  machinery  upon, 
149-150;  in  corn  belt,  41; 
shortage  of  on  farm,  152-153. 

Labor,  child:  155-159;  bibliog- 
phy,  161 ;  in  Colorado  beet 
fields,  156;  in  the  cotton  fields, 
158-159;  in  Maryland,  157. 

Land  Tenure,  106-108,  109;  and 
rural  church,  421-426. 

Land  valuation,  145-147. 

Lane,   Winthrop   D. 

Healing    Lap    of    Mother    Earth, 
290-295. 

Leadership:  Chap  XIX,  591-610; 
bibliography,  609-610;  as  per- 
sonal ascendancy,  581-583: 
characteristics  of,  583 ;  develop- 
ment of,  589-601;  elements  of, 
585;  rural,  584;  sources  of, 
587-589;  training  for,  585-587. 


Libraries:    rural,   394-401;    bibliog- 
raphy, 410;  circulating,  274. 
Literature,  agricultural,  278-279. 
Little  country  theater,  237-240. 

McNutt,  Matthew  ,B. 

Ten  Years  in  a  Country  Church, 

411-421. 

Machinery,  influence  of,   147-150. 
Mann,   A.   R. 

The  Sociology  of  Rural  Life,  611- 

615. 
Manning,  Warren  H. 

The  History  of  Village  Improve- 
ment in  the  U.  S.,  455-464. 
Marquis,  J.   Clyde. 

Social    Significance   of   the    Agri- 
cultural  Press,  275-279. 
Mead,  Elwood. 

Soldier  Settlements  in  English- 
speaking  Countries,  114-116. 
Mental  and  moral  aspects  of  farm 
life:  Chap.  VII,  162-184;  bib- 
liography, 183-184;  character- 
istics of  farmer,  162-164;  city- 
drift,  172-175;  farm  life  and 
childhood,  164-165;  mind  of 
the  iarmer,  175-181 ;  qualities 
of  rural  people,  165-16S;  rural 
environment  and  great  men, 
168-171. 
Merritt,  Eugene. 

Agricultural   Element  in   Popula- 
tion, 150-152. 
Monahan,  A.  C. 

The  County  as  a  Unit  of  Admin- 
istration,  345-347. 
Moonlight     schools     of     Kentucky, 

356-363. 
Moran,  J.  Sterling. 

The  Community  Fair,  402-406. 
Morgan,  E.  L. 

How   to   Organixe   a   Rural   Com- 
munity, 507-576. 
Morrill  Act,  386. 
Murray,  W.  O. 

Health  on  Prison  Farms,  289-290. 

National  Education  Association 
Commission,  Series  Xo.  1  :  a 
National  Program  for  Educa- 
tion, 363-371. 


630 


INDEX 


Negro,  rural  in  south,  65-74-;  bibli- 
ography, 73-74. 

Nelson  Act,  386. 

New  England,  country  life  in :  Chap. 
I,  1-2G;  bibliography,  25-26;  a 
century  ago,  1-13;  agriculture 
in,  20-25;  future  of,  16-15);  in- 
temperance in  colonial  days,  13- 
16. 

Non-Partisan  League,  557-567. 

Nurse,  district,  189-190. 

Olsen,  John. 

Immigration   in   Agriculture,   75- 
86. 

Organization  of  rural  interests: 
Chap.  XVIII,  500-576;  bibliog- 
raphy, 575-580 ;  community, 
567-576;  international,  512- 
514;  national,  515-536:  polit- 
ical, 557-568;  rural,  500-512; 
voluntary,  536-557. 

Ownership  and  tenancy,  137-147; 
bibliography,  160-161. 

Pageant,  rural,  243-248. 

Patrons  of  Husbandry :  in  New  Eng- 
land, 23;  purposes  of,  552-557. 

Physical  Education,  in  rural 
schools,  229-235. 

Pioneer:  character  of,  29-34;  spirit 
of,  34-35. 

Play,    need    of    in    rural    life,    226- 
*228. 

Plunkett,   Sir  Horace. 

Women  in  Rural  Life,  323-324, 

Police,  rural:  Chap.  XI,  303-311; 
bibliography,  312;  Canadian 
Royal  Northwest  Mounted,  306- 
307,  310-311;  Pennsylvania 
State,  308-310. 

Population  :  agricultural  element  in, 
150-152 ;  decreasing  in  rural 
districts,  151. 

Press,  agricultural,  275-279. 

Problems  of  country  life:  Chap.  V, 
95-117;  bibliography  117-118; 
farmer's  relation  to  country, 
116-117;  need  of  national  pol- 
icy, 95-114;  needs  of  farmer, 
99-102;  soldier  settlement,  114- 
116. 


Quaintance,  H.  W. 

Influence    of    Machinery    on    the 
Economic  and  Social  Conditions 
of  the  Agricultural  People,  147- 
150. 
Quick,  Herbert. 

Henry  Wallace,  604-609. 
Women  on  the  Farms,  313-319. 


Rankin,  W.  S. 

Rural  Sanitation:  Definition, 
Field,  Principles,  Methods  and 
Costs,  197-202. 

Recreation,  rural:  Chap.  IX,  226- 
248;  bibliography,  253-254; 
drama,  236-240;  farm  play- 
ground, 236;  miracle  play,  24l- 
243 ;  need  of,  226-228 ;  pageant, 
243-248;  physical  education  in 
rural  schools,  229-235;  that 
people  like,  235-236. 

Retired  fanner,  38.  42-43. 

Rich  farmers,  classes  of,  103-104. 

Roads,  255-266,  273;  bibliography, 
281-282. 

Roberts  A.  E.  and  Israel,  Henry. 
Rural  Work  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A., 
437-440. 

Roosevelt,  Theodore. 

The  Farmer  in  Relation  to  the 
Welfare  of  the  Whole  Country, 
116-117. 

Pennsylvania  State  Police,  308- 
310. 

Ross,  Edward  Alsworth. 
The  Middle  West,  27-34. 

Rowe,  C.  L. 

Ten  Years'  Progress  in  County 
Y.  M.  C.  A.,  441-442. 

Rural  Sociology:  Chap.  XX,  611- 
624;  bibliography,  623-624; 
character  of,  611-615;  defini- 
tions, 622-023:  scope  of,  615- 
620;  teaching  of,  620-622. 


Sanderson,  Dwight. 

Definitions    of    Rural    Sociology, 

623. 
The  Teaching  of  Rural  Sociology, 

620-622. 


INDEX 


631 


Sanitation,  rural:  definition  and 
field  of,  107-198;  in  farm 
homes,  320;  methods  and  costs, 
198-202. 

School,  rural:  Chap.  XIII,  337-370; 
bibliography,  374-376;  adminis- 
tration of,  345-347;  consoli- 
dated, 371-374;  curriculum  for, 
IUl-345;  high  school,  348-350; 
in  contrast  with  town,  269; 
Kentucky  moonlight,  .350-363; 
manse,  351-352;  national  emer- 
gency in,  363-371;  professional 
teaching  for,  347-348;  southern 
mountain,  63;  subsidization  of, 
108. 

School  gardening,  355-356. 

Sex  problem  of  country  life,  180- 
181. 

Shelby,  Mary  Doane. 

An  Open  Letter  to  Secretary 
Houston,  319-323. 

Simons,   A.    M. 
Who  Is  the  Farmer?  110-111. 

Simons,  L.  R. 

Organization  of  a  County  for  Ex- 
tension Work  —  Farm  Bureau 
Plan,  518-536. 

Smith-Hughes  Act,  407. 

Smith-Lever  Act,  386-389;  home 
economics  work  under,  389-391. 

Social  Center,  see  Community  Cen- 
ter. 

Soldier  settlement,  114-116. 

South,  the  old  and  the  new:  Chap. 
Ill,  46-73;  bibliography,  72- 
73;  Carolina  Highlanders,  58- 
65:  Negro  in,  65-72;  Social 
conditions  46-58. 

Southwest,  36-37;  cooperation  in, 
36-37 ;  effect  of  irrigation  upon, 
36. 

Spillman,  Wm.  J. 
The  Rural  Environment  and  Great 
Men,  168-172. 

Stevens,  Edwin  A. 

The  Future  of  Good  Roads  in 
State  and  Nation,  255-266. 

Stewart,  Cora  Wilson. 

The  Moonlight  schools  of  Ken- 
tucky, 356-363. 

Suggestion,  and  city  drift,  172-175. 


Survey:  Chap.  XVII,  478-499;  bib- 
liography, 497-499;  in  country 
life  work,  478-481 ;  method  of 
making,  484-490;  principles  of, 
481-484;  survey  of  a  rural  com- 
munity, 490-497. 

Taylor,  W.  E. 

Farming  as  a  Cure  for  the  Insane, 
295-296. 

Telephone,  social  value  of,  280-281. 

Tenancy:  advantages  of,  142-144; 
increase  of,  107,  137;  in  Texas, 
159;  opposing  views  as  to  ef- 
fects of  138-140;  social  effect 
of,  140-142. 

Truancy,  301 

Theater,  see  Drama. 

Thompson,  C.   W. 

Definition  of  a  Rural  Community, 
576. 

Thompson,  John. 

The  League's  ( Non-Partisan ) 
Work  in  the  Northwest,  557- 
564. 

Thrift,  promoted  by  cooperation, 
133. 

Town,  see  Village. 

Transportation,  see  Communication. 

Tredgold,  A.  W. 

Amentia  in  Rural  England,  217. 

Turner,  Frederick  Jackson. 

The  Significance  of  the  Frontier 
in  American  History,  29-34. 

Tynan,  Thomas  J. 

Outdoor  Work  for  Prisoners,  288- 
289. 

Village:  Chap.  XIV,  455-477;  bibli- 
ography, 476-477;  improve- 
ment, 455-464,  471-475;  moral 
plan,  467—471;  social  privileges 
of,  464-467. 

Vincent,  Geo.  E. 

The  Spread  of  the  School  Manse 
Idea,  351-352. 

Wallace,  Henry. 

Land     Tenure     and     the     Rural 

Church,  421-426. 
Wallace,  Henry,  life  work,  604-609. 


632 


INDEX 


Washington,  Booker  T. 

The  Rural  Negro  and  the  South, 
65-69. 

Waugh,  Frank  A. 

Civic  Improvement  in  Village  and 

Country,  471-475. 
Rural  Art,  248-252. 

West:  Chap.  II,  27-45;  bibliogra- 
phy, 44-43;  corn  belt,  38-44; 
domestic  service  in,  42;  family 
life,  39-40;  fiber  of  people,  27- 
28;  labor  problem,  41;  political 
unrest  in,  43,  557-567;  prosper- 
ity of  agriculture,  44;  retired 
farmer,  42-43;  social  diversions 
in,  40;  spirit  of,  35-37. 


White,  Georgia  L. 

The    Problem    of    the    Changing 

Rural  Home,  324-320. 
Wilson,  A.  D. 

Farmers'  Clubs,  541-552. 
Wilson,  WTarren  H. 

The  Number  of  Churches  in  Six 

Counties  in  Ohio  443-444. 
What  the  People  Like,  235. 
Wood,  Thos.  D. 

City    is    Healthier    for    Children 

than  Country,  193-197. 
Women,  on  the  farm,  313-323. 

Y.  M.  C.  A.,  437-440,  441-442. 
Y.  W.  C.  A.,  440-441. 


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